Vigilance in the Shadows
by Another Visionary
Summary: The Witches are, and have always been, humanity's counter to the Neuroi. But when a new threat that surpasses even the power of the Witches rises alongside the ongoing Neuroi invasion, one group stands against the coming storm. Vigilant and confident, they are the 115th Experimental Combat Unit: X-COM.
1. Operation Vengeful Inspiration

I don't have any copyright or ownership claims to Strike Witches, XCOM, or any of its deriatives and mods.

* * *

Ever since the first Neuroi emergences in ancient history, the Witches have served as humanity's sword and shield.  
Their powers allowed them, and them alone, to stand up against the red and black tides that would have otherwise devoured humanity.

But what of other threats?

If a threat appeared that surpassed even the world's Witches, who would stand up for humanity then?

* * *

In December, 1942, an alien craft, the first of many, appeared in Earth orbit.  
When it entered the atmosphere over Suomus, Allied forces believed it to be a Neuroi.  
A local Witch squadron was mobilized to eliminate it.

The sole survivor reported that it was most emphatically NOT a Neuroi.

She brought reports of craft that were much tougher than they should have been, and green bolts of energy that pierced their shields with one hit.

A ground recon squad, purely conventional in composition, was sent to investigate it after it landed.

There were only two survivors, but they managed to clear out the UFO and neutralize its occupants.

Thus, the 115th Experimental Combat Unit was formed, to research and fight against this new alien threat.  
For two years, the Unit stayed inactive, waiting and watching for further signs of the threat.

In the February of 1944, alien starships began to appear in high Earth orbit.  
Reports began to trickle in, of strange events: rumors of abductions, disappearances, paranormal and unattributable occurences began to spread.  
The squadrons on the front lines found themselves beset by a foe that seemed to surpass even the toughest Neuroi.

There was one success, however, against the new enemy.

On the first day of March, a lone interceptor, bearing the markings of the "115th Experimental Fighter Squadron", shot down a small scout craft.  
The 115th X-COM Unit now found itself on the front lines against an enemy unknown.

This is their story.

* * *

 ** _Vigilance in the Shadows  
_** Chapter 1: Operation "Vengeful Inspiration"

* * *

 _[Yokosuka, Fuso]_  
 _[May 5, 1944]_

* * *

 _Those with power are always led to where it is needed the most._

The words rang inside of Yoshika Miyafuji's head like an incessant bell.  
 _She was needed?_

 _But... if she became a Witch... then she'd be part of that awful war!_  
 _...Not in a million years, she wouldn-_

 ***BOOM*  
** ***BOOM*  
** ***CRASH***

"Huh? What was that?"  
Getting up and walking around, she could see lights, flashes in the distance.

An eerie, sickly fog or mist seemed to be drifting towards the clinic.  
Hearing footsteps in the hallways, she took a peek outside her room.  
It was her mom, with a flashlight in her hand.

"Oh, Yoshika. Were you awakened by the noise as well?", she asked. Yoshika nodded.

"Well, wait right here. I'll go take a look outside. I'd heard strange rumors about things going on during nighttime, but for it to happen so close to our home..."

"Nonsense. It's probably just a tree falling or somesuch...", Yoshika's grandmother interjected, coming from the other end of the hallway.

"...but nonetheless, we should go check outside. Someone could need help."

The three of them stepped out into the night, with Yoshika's grandmother leading the way.  
A small patch of movement to their left, a bright green light, and-

* * *

The six members of Strike-One rattled and jostled in the Skyranger's alien alloy seats as the pilot flew ever lower, approaching their destination.

Commander Shiro Nakamoto stood towards the rear of the craft, by the raised exit ramp. He held onto a handle, hastily welded to the Skyranger's ceiling, and briefed the team.

"We've been tracking this Abductor on radar for a while now; it's been flying low and slow, and we all know what that means.  
"It appears to have touched down by a small magical clinic, on a lightly forested mountainside.  
"This is an anti-abduction operation; We're to sweep and clear the area."

At 2258 hours local time, The Skyranger touched down on a dirt road, just down the road from the Miyafuji Clinic.

"Go! Clear the Skyranger!"

* * *

Her grandmother crumpled to the ground where she stood. Yoshika could smell something burning, like cooking pork fat.  
She froze where she stood. She couldn't understand; what, how, why, what? Everything seemed to be moving too fast-

Her mother grabbed her and pushed her back into the house.

She was saying something, but it didn't quite register to Yoshika. Something about... going? Hiding? She pushed Yoshika again, into the hallway.  
Yoshika's own feet did the rest, carrying her, somehow, through her house, into her room.

 _She needed safety, shelter. A hiding spot._  
 _The corner could work, anything could work, she just needed to hide._

She curled up, covered her ears, and tried not to think about the agonized screams coming from the hallway.

* * *

Shiro took point.  
Running past a dead Sectoid, diving for the ground behind some bushes, he popped up and took a glance around, keeping forward overwatch for the team.

A brief grey blur of motion, and a flash of large, yellow eyes prompted a quick burst from the rifle.  
A Sectoid fell, equally yellow blood spurting from bullet wounds to its head and torso.

Ahead from him and slightly to the left was the half-open entrance to the Miyafuji Clinic, obviously damaged by plasma fire.  
He moved up, directly across from the half-open entrance gate, looking into the clinic grounds.

By the crumbling walls to his left he could see a short, brown blob of hair- Lieutenant Petra Lorenz, with a shotgun in her hands.  
Just behind her was Lt. Blanc Clostermann, also toting a shotgun.

A few seconds later, the rest of the team joined them.  
Lieutenant Mikhail Ivanov was already set up by the entrance gate, peering into the Clinic's courtyard, steadying his rocket launcher.  
Lieutenant Saya Sasaki was right behind him, lightly fidgeting with a grenade's pin.  
Major Ricardo Fernandes was to Shiro's right, light machine gun set up and at the ready.

Shiro looked at the members of his team.

"Lorenz, Blanc, and I will breach the building.  
"Sasaki, Ivanov. Follow behind us.  
"Ricardo: Watch our backs out here, okay?"

They heard a loud, piercing scream from within the building.

"No time to waste, let's _go_!"

* * *

The three operatives within the house divided it into two halves to be searched separately.  
Lorenz and Blanc took the right side, by the kitchen and the main clinic office.

Shiro took the left side, into a hallway that presumably led to the bedrooms.  
He stepped over the slightly plasma-burnt corpse of a middle-aged woman and crept up to a turn in the hallway.

He froze- sounds were coming from further inside.  
Quietly reloading his rifle, he slipped further into the house.

He pressed himself up against the left wall, next to a conspicuously half-open sliding door.  
He could hear inside... sniffling? He stepped inside the room, floorboards creaking as he did so.

He heard a quiet gasp from his right. Turning in that direction, his gun-mounted light shone upon a small girl, looking for all the world like a deer in headlights.

* * *

Yoshika froze.

 _It didn't work. Her hiding didn't work, and now she was going to die here._  
She closed her eyes, and sliently pleaded for her mom, her grandma, _anyone_ to find her...

She felt a tapping on her shoulder. Slowly, she opened her eyes again.

She recoiled slightly when she found a man in a strange blue vest crouched less than a few feet away from her.

"Miss? Can you understand me? Miss?"

Hesitantly, she nodded.

"Okay, good. We're going to get you out of here. Follow me. Quietly."

Suddenly, she could hear gunshots from the other side of the house.

* * *

Blanc was pinned down. Four of the Sectoid bastards had blown out one of the house's walls with plasma fire, taking cover behind the trees outside.  
Major Fernandes, directly to her left, had, in return, pinned down what seemed to be the leader of the group with constant fire from his LMG.  
To her right, she could see Lorenz, who did a couple of stretching motions behind her cover, then leapt out of cover and dashed to a position further up, towards a large rock.

Thin green streams flew towards her from seemingly every direction; she deftly ducked, weaved, and dived past all of them, sliding behind the rock without so much as a scratch.

While the aliens were distracted with Lorenz, Ivanov took the opportunity to move up, just behind the rest of the team and in the doorway to the partially-destroyed examination room.  
He leaned against the thin walls with trepidation; this cover wouldn't do much good if he were to get shot at, but at least it concealed him.

Quickly retrieving his rocket launcher from its mount on his back, he slid it to full extension, pulled and loaded a rocket from his hip, and kneeled.  
He brought the launcher up, took careful aim at the ground between an occupied cluster of trees, and-

* * *

Yoshika watched the man peek out from behind the corner for a split second, before turning to her and nodding.

"Okay. You go on ahead. Take cover behind the kitchen counter by the far wall."

He moved back to let Yoshika take a look.  
Through the walls of the house, she could see more bright green lights, and more frequent yellow-orange ones.

A large Orussian man seemed to be moving up to the same wall of the house as her, with a large tube on his back.

She felt a light push on her back, and she scrambled around the corner and to the far wall, with the man in blue right behind her.  
As she caught her breath, Yoshika heard a distinctly Orussian voice yelling, "ROCKETS AWAY!".

Not a second later a large explosion seemed to rock the building.

* * *

Leaning and crouching against the doorway, Shiro peered into the room ahead.

Past the destroyed wall, he could see that the rocket blast had cleared out two of the invaders ahead, and left one dazed in the open.

Blanc, with a grin, cocked her shotgun, and leaped over her cover, racing directly towards the uncovered alien.  
In one swift motion she brought her shotgun to bear, took less than careful aim, and fired it, blowing the unfortunate alien's skull wide open.

That left the problem of the one remaining Sectoid, the leader.

Shiro could see the leader take careful aim even through the suppression fire, and fire a burst of plasma that hit Major Fernandes squarely in the chest.  
He flew back, collapsing in a heap just behind the overturned bed that served as his cover.

Shiro swallowed his concern for his friend and peered through the sights of his rifle, firing a quick burst.

The leader recoiled, obviously hit, but continued to stand- Shiro had merely clipped him.

Nonetheless, Shiro saw something move just behind the Sectoid- a humanoid form.  
It brought something to bear, with a brief glint of white reflected light.

* * *

Sasaki, unseen until now, brought her own, special weapon up to meet the Sectoid just in front of her.  
She powered on the Arc Thrower, and with a firm squeeze of the trigger, shocked the last invader into unconsciousness.

With a wave to the team, she yelled out, "Capture confirmed!"

Shiro gave a brief thumbs-up back towards her, and then immediately turned to the pressing matter of Major Fernandez.  
Ricardo seemed to be bleeding heavily from several wounds on his chest, and most of the flesh on the front of his torso seemed to be heavily burnt.  
The team almost got to work immediately- Shiro pulled out the first aid kit strapped to his back, and the team crowded around Ricardo.

Before they could do anything, however, someone pushed them aside- the girl.

* * *

Nothing seemed to make sense anymore to Yoshika.

Everything was so surreal; it felt almost dreamlike.  
She had been transported from her quiet, peaceful life to what seemed to be a warzone.  
It all seemed to rush past her in a blaze, sights and sounds and awful smells-

-but even though everything seemed strange and unfamiliar and terrifying...

...she knew one thing. She knew how to heal people.

And someone needed her help, urgently.

She raced past the doorway and into the crowd of people, pushing them aside.  
She immediately began to loose her magic, a blue glow enveloping the fallen man.

Blood vessels resealed themselves, wounds knitted themselves back together, burnt skin was made like new again.

 _He was going to live; he had to live._  
She poured everything she had into her magic, the growing darkess in the edges of her vision not even registering to her.

 _He had to live. He had to live. He had to live. He had to live. He had to live._

 _He had to live._

 _He.. had.. to-_

Yoshika blacked out, falling onto a fully-healed Ricardo Fernandez.

* * *

Strike-One watched in stunned silence as the young girl, obviously magical, seemed to make Fernandez' wounds fade away.

Shortly after his wounds had healed completely, the girl fell unconscious, causing most of the team to start in surprise.  
Her soft breathing put most of their worries to rest, however.

Shiro simply scooped her up and carried her to the Skyranger.

Thirty minutes after midnight, the Skyranger took off for the 115th Experimental Combat Unit's headquarters in Brittania.

* * *

 **End Chapter 1**

* * *

[Mission Summary: Operation "Vengeful Inspiration"]

Alien Combatants Killed:  
5x "Sectoid"

Alien Artifacts Recovered:  
1x Sectoid Captive  
1x Alien Plasma Pistol  
Weapon Fragments

Miscellaneous:  
Civillian Recovered: Yoshika Miyafuji

The alien abduction attempt in Yokosuka was stopped successfully.  
The rescued civllian, Yoshika Miyafuji, appears to be a witch with tremendous healing ability;  
recruiting her into the 115th X-COM could increase combat survival rates dramatically.


	2. No Going Back

I don't have any copyright or ownership claims to Strike Witches, XCOM, or any of its deriatives and mods.

* * *

 **Chapter 2:** No Going Back

* * *

"Central, this is Big Sky. Strike-One's returning home. Two unconcious, not wounded. Everyone else is fine."

Central Officer Joan Bradford smiled. Another one by the numbers.

"Roger that, Big Sky. Who's unconcious?"

"Central, Major Fernandez and a civilian are out. The civ' seems like a witch, probably out from exhaustion."

Central raised her eyebrows. A Witch, that was new.

"Copy that, Big Sky. Medical'll be standing by to pick 'em up."

* * *

With a brief jolt, the Skyranger touched down in the center of Avalon Site's exposed runway.  
The exhausted members of Strike-One filed out of the back of the transport aircraft.

The medical staff flowed past them, into the back of the craft.

Shiro placed the unconcious civillian on a speedily provided stretcher, and she was soon carted away into the base proper.  
On another stretcher lay an equally unconcious Fernandez, following just behind the first.

* * *

Yoshika awoke to sterile white light.

"..Huh..? Where... where am I?"

The room smelled familiar; the scent of disinfectant and medicine hung in the air.  
She could also sense a handful of other, more unpleasant odors: burnt and rotting flesh, coppery blood...

As she sat up, she took a look around.

She seemed to be in a hospital room, on a fairly comfortable cot.  
To her left and right, she could see other, older patients; some seemed to be resting, others were being tended to.  
They all seemed to be heavily banadaged in places- the chest, the legs, the arms.

A woman with a labcoat and facemask turned to her.

"Finally awake, I see. Please wait," she said, as she walked out of the room.

She returned a minute later with a familiar Fusoan man in a blue uniform.  
His expression was perfectly neutral, nothing more than an uncurved mouth and piercing eyes that bored into her.

"I'm glad to see you're finally with us. You undoubtedly have a lot of questions to ask. Why don't you start?"

Yoshika looked around for a bit. "...Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here?"

The man grabbed a nearby chair, and sat down in it, back straight and stiff.  
With a breath, he started.

"Where you are exactly, is classified. Just know that this is the headquarters of the 115th Experimental Combat Unit, or X-COM for short.  
"We were established to combat the new, unknown alien threat that has appeared over the past two months. I am its commander.  
"You are here because you fell unconcious while healing one of our operatives on a mission; you passed out from exhaustion, if I remember correctly."

The Fusoan seemed to smile slightly, at this.

"Miss... Miyafuji, was it? You saved one of my operatives' lives out there. You have my deepest thanks."

Yoshika started to remember, now.

"Oh, that man... where is he? Is he okay?"

The commander nodded to his right, and Yoshika saw the man from before, resting peacefully on the cot next to hers.

The Fusoan man spoke up again, "You have a great and useful power, Miss Miyafuji. I can see you helping many people with it."

She blushed at the praise. "T-That's not true, my mom and grandma are much-"

She stopped, and the commander's face seemed to drop, returning to its perfectly neutral form.

"My mother and grandma... where are they?"

The commander sat there for a few moments in silence, head bowed and eyes closed.  
Yoshika grew more worried with every passing second, every heartbeat growing faster and stronger.

"I'm sorry..."

Yoshika's eyes grew wide, and she clutched her covers tighter.

 _No, it couldn't be true..._

"I'm afraid... they didn't make it."

* * *

Yoshika felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

The horrible, horrible memories of the previous night came back in full force.  
The horrific green light, the screaming, the smell of burnt flesh and wood in the air...

She drew her knees up to her chest, and began to cry.

* * *

Shiro watched the young witch, Miss Miyafuji, cry her heart out into the sheets and her knees.  
He stood up, walked over to her side, and put a comforting hand onto her shoulder.

An hour later, when she finally finished crying, he was still there.

* * *

Yoshika was out of tears, but her sadness hadn't left her quite yet.  
She continued to dwell on dark and depressing matters.

 _What am I going to do now?_

She didn't have anyone, or anything, left. Her father was gone, and now her mother, grandmother, and even her home were gone.  
She couldn't think of anything. She didn't know what to do.

A cacophony of piercing voices broke through her thoughts.

"Shit, shit shit! Get the burn salve and the blood packs, now!"  
"Heart rate's dropping, we can't stop the bleeding!"  
"The plasma wounds to her torso are too severe, how are we supposed to-"

Yoshika looked up. A stretcher was frantically being carted into the room, a swarm of doctors surrounding it.

She felt a tapping on her shoulder. The commander looked down at her.

"You're a healwitch, right? You should go help them."

"But.. But, my power isn't-"

"-good enough? That doesn't matter for now. Something is better than nothing, and you can always get better."

Yoshika paused, and thought for a moment.  
Shakily, she got off the cot. The commander held her steady, and helped her get onto her feet.  
With a first few uncertain steps, she moved towards the stretcher, with the commander right behind her.

The commander paused, stopped her in her tracks, seemed to think for a second, then spoke.

"Remember: you passed out from exhaustion last time. Stay calm, and keep yourself under control. Don't go dark this time, okay?"

Yoshika pushed through the cluster of people around the stretcher, the man behind her giving explanations.

"She's a healwitch, don't worry, she'll handle it..."

* * *

Shiro watched as Miyafuji loosed her magic on the unconcious woman in front of her.  
The room was enveloped in a bright blue glow, and Shiro grimaced.  
The glow was bright... too bright, maybe?

 _Magical powers are based on emotion. Strong feelings make her use more energy but lead to her exhausting herself for less benefit._

He placed a hand on the healwitch's shoulder again.  
With his best "commanding" voice, he spoke.

"Remember. Keep control. Stay. Calm."

The blue glow's brightness began to fade, becoming a blue aura of light that covered the entirety of the wounds.  
The woman's wounds seemed to heal themselves slightly faster now.

"Good. Don't let your emotions get the better of you."

Eventually, the aura faded away entirely, and the doctors pushed the both of them away.

"Wow, her vitals are stable... don't get complacent, though! Move her to a bed and get a monitor on her, ASAP!"

Miyafuji stumbled backwards a bit, very light-headed from the experience.  
With a steadying arm, Shiro caught her back, and kept her on her feet.

"That makes two of my people you've saved."

* * *

Shiro and Yoshika sat on simple chairs by the medbay's entrance.  
Yoshika was still exhausted, but slightly less so, now.

Still though, distractions aside, the question for Yoshika remained.

 _What am I going to do?_

Yoshika curled up on the chair, drawing her knees to her chest again.

 _I don't have very many options, do I? Go back home and find an orphanage, or..._

She looked around, at the medbay, filled with the wounded.  
She thought back, to the previous night, filled with green energy and gunfire... and the wounded.

 _These people seem to take a lot of injuries out in the field._

A thought came to her: _Why don't I join the military?_

On one hand, she'd be a part of that terrible war, and she could die, horribly at that.

But on the other hand...  
She would be helping people with her powers, like her father wanted her to...

...and it wasn't as if she had anything better to do with her life.

A small voice in her, deep and quiet, reminded her of something else:  
 _They hurt you, right...? So do what any good Fusoan would do, and go get vengeance...for your family..._

She quieted the voice, blood frozen.

 _She didn't want to think that way, she didn't, she **couldn't**!_  
 _It was wrong, it was wrong to think like that of something else that was alive and.. and.._

The voice came up again.  
 _Alive? Like your mother and grandma would be, if it weren't for the aliens?_

 _..and she reasoned that by doing this, she could help people.  
If she did this, she could keep people from hurting, and dying, like... her..._

 _...she could help people, right! And that's what mattered!  
_ _That's all that mattered!_

"I... I- I want to join you!"

 _..that's all that mattered..right?_

* * *

Shiro blinked.

"Join us?"

Yoshika nodded, ferverently.

"Y-Yes! I want to go with you and help you all!"

Shiro took a deep breath, face hardening into a slight frown.

"Why?"

"Because I want to help everyone! There are so many people here wounded or dying- and I can help them!"

Shiro looked away.

"You do realize there is a good chance you'll join them here in the medbay, or even the morgue, right?"

Yoshika quailed slightly, but swallowed her fear.  
"Yes, and I'm willing to accept that!"

"While I admire your courage, I'll have to ask you again: are you sure you know what you're getting into?  
"Are you prepared to take on what we will require of you?"

Yoshika nodded once more, with conviction.  
"Yes, sir!"

* * *

Shiro bowed his head, and closed his eyes.

 _She is a witch, and a powerful one at that._  
 _She's already saved two of my soldiers._

 _...but the poor girl doesn't know what she's getting into, does she?_  
 _She's probably out for revenge, or just desperate for something to cling to, with her parents and home gone..._

He opened his eyes again, and simply met her fierce gaze, and studied her will for a few seconds.  
With a sigh, he relented.

"Very well. Report to my office at 1700 hours this afternoon.  
"You are now a part of the 115th Experimental Combat Unit."

 _Did I make the right decision?_

* * *

Mio Sakamoto stood at the entrance to Yokosuka's naval base.

It was almost noon. She'd expected Miyafuji to show herself by now.

Maybe she needed more convincing? She did have a night's sleep to think about it...

* * *

She should be getting pretty close to the Miyafuji Clinic by now, if she remembered the mountain path correctly...

"Um, ma'am? I'm afraid I'll have to stop you here."

A group of men in Fuso Army uniforms were standing along the path, for some reason.

The man in the middle paused to get a good look of her face, eyes shifting to the right side of her face.  
She could tell he recognized her, by the way his eyes widened.

"Oh? For what reason?"

The men all looked between each other.

"It- uh, um.. It's classifi-"

A man in a plastic, yellow, full-body suit and a gas mask stepped up behind the guards and tapped the lead on the shoulder.

"We're packing up, time to go."

The lead guard nodded briefly, before turning to Mio.

"Sorry for inconviencing you, ma'am. You can go, I guess."

He turned to leave, and Mio swiftly walked past him, further down the path.

As she got closer to the Clinic, she saw more and more people in gas masks and lab coats.  
Pieces of equipment were being dismantled here and there, with heavy boxes being loaded into trucks.

A handful of people looked up and watched her pass with some interest, but most were occupied with the task of wrapping up whatever it was they were doing.

* * *

By the time she finally neared the Clinic, most of the workers were gone.

She turned the corner, finally bringing the Miyafuji Clinic into view.

Or what was left of it, anyways.

Parts of the outer wall were destroyed, blown apart in places.  
Half of the house had almost collapsed; a large hole had apparently been burnt through the western wall somehow, leaving the examination room exposed to the elements.  
She could see small craters in the grounds outside the Clinic, through the large holes in the outer wall.

The house was completely silent.

"What the hell?"

* * *

"Um, here you go, ma'am. The file you requested."

The clerk handed Mio a thin folder of papers. She glanced through them quickly.

 _Hm. Updated May 5? Yesterday?_  
 _Family Lineage... Academic Ability... ah, here._  
 _Current status... In active military service? Wait, I didn't recruit her..._  
 _Current Branch and Unit... classified? Commanding officer reports... also classified?_

Something was off. Something had happened to Yoshika, and she needed to find out.

She needed to do it for Ichiro's sake.

* * *

 **End Chapter 2.**

* * *

Additional Information:

 _[Fuso Ministry for Magical Talent]_  
 _[Witch Information File - Miyafuji, Yoshika]_  
 _[Updated 05/05/44]_

Family Lineage: Miyafuji  
Consistent Witch Lineage?: Yes  
Lineage Ability: Telekinesis, Category: Healing  
Special Notes: Magical ability tends to be maintained well into old age.

Individual Magical Ability: Healing (see Lineage Ability)  
Special Notes: NONE

Academic Ability: Average  
Athletic Ability: Average  
Mundane Skills: Cooking

Status: In Active Military Service  
Branch: CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET  
Current Unit: CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET  
Commanding Officer Reports: CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET  
Previous Military History: None  
Special Notes: For further information, contact Allied Command in Brittania.


	3. You Never Forget the First

I don't have any copyright or ownership claims to Strike Witches, XCOM, or any of its deriatives and mods.

* * *

 **Chapter 3:** You Never Forget the First

* * *

[1201 Hours, May 5, 1944]  
[Yokosuka, Fuso]

"Yoshika-chan, get the mail!"

"Yes, mom!"

Yoshika ran to the front gate, as usual. The mailman was there, waiting for her.  
She handed him a letter; looking closer at the letter, it seemed to be from her father!

Excitedly, she ran into the house.

"Mom! grandma!"

When she entered the kitchen, she found her mom working at the counter.  
Something seemed to be cooking. It smelled like pork, with a slight coppery smell to it.

"Mom! I- I got a letter from-"

Her mom turned around.

Yoshika recoiled from her mother.

She looked more like a corpse than a living person- her skin was burnt or rotten away in places, and parts of her brown hair were falling out.  
Holes had been burnt into, and through, her body, each one bleeding a bright red, and crawling with maggots and bugs.  
Parts of her face had seemingly melted, running and flowing into each other like a wax figurine.

"M-Mom? What happened to you?! You-"

"Yoshika, you shouldn't talk that way to your mother."

She turned around at the voice, to find her grandma.

Her grandma seemed normal, at first.  
Then she saw a bright green flash, and when she regained her vision, there was nothing left of her grandma save for a skeleton with bits of flesh hanging on.

She scurried backwards, away from both of the ghastly figures, when she felt something hard and metallic against her head.  
She whirled around, and found herself inches away from an alien face.

It was grey, blurry, and undefined. It raised a shiny silver and green gun to Yoshika's forehead.

 _Mom... help me! Please!_

It fired, and all Yoshika saw was a bright green flash.

* * *

[2314 Hours, May 7, 1944]  
[XCOM Site "Avalon", Brittania]

Yoshika came awake with a jolt.  
She brought her hands close to her, up to her heart, as if trying to slow it by sheer willpower.

 _That- that was all a dream._

After a few minutes of calming down, she took a look around from her position on the bed.  
The barracks still seemed to be dark, and she didn't feel rested at all; it was probably still late at night.

 _I should head back to sleep._

She closed her eyes again, and tried to fall back asleep.  
As soon as she did, the half-dead face of her mother appeared before her eyes.

She very quickly opened her eyes again.

She turned onto her side, looking at the bunk to her left.  
She studied the person across from her.

Exact details were hard to make out in the darkness, but she seemed to be a fellow Fusoan.

Her long dark hair went down, past her shoulders, and across her... chest...

Yoshika's gaze wandered to the middle of the person's chest.  
It was difficult to see them underneath the hair, but that person seemed to have fairly large-

"Like what you see?"

Eyes snapping immediately upwards, Yoshika noticed that the other person seemed to be awake.  
She saw brown eyes blink sleepily in the darkness, and a friendly smile came to the other person's face.

She laughed lightly, then whispered to Yoshika.

"Sorry for scaring you like that. Can't sleep?"

Yoshika, suddenly self-conscious, blushed.

"...yes. Sorry for staring."

"Don't worry, I don't mind. You're the new girl the Commander brought in, right? You nervous?"

"I guess so..."

"Don't be nervous! I doubt anyone's going to let anything hurt you, you're so cute!"

Yoshika blushed even harder, and averted her eyes.

"I- I'm not.."

The woman inched closer to the edge of her bed.

"You know, you remind me of my sister, back home. She looks just like you!"

"R-Really?"

"Yeah! She even does the stuttering thing, it's so cute and it makes me just wanna hug you so tight!"

Yoshika looked back up, at the woman across from her.

She seemed to be beaming, a wide smile stretching across her face.  
To Yoshika, it seemed like it should have glown brightly in the darkness.

She smiled back, for the first time since arriving here.

"Thanks."

Yoshika felt her eyes drooping.

When she finally closed them, nothing came to haunt her.

* * *

[0600 Hours, May 8, 1944]

Yoshika got up, and out of bed at the wakeup call.  
She moved to follow the procession of people walking, or shambling, out of the barracks.

A pair of arms snaked under hers, though, and lifted her off the ground, stopping her before she could move further.  
As the arms around her squeezed her tightly, long dark hair dropped down by her shoulders, from behind her.

A familiar female voice singsonged,  
"Since I didn't get to do it last night, I'm gonna hug you now~!"

A short woman with short, light brown hair and a white shirt walked up to them.  
She looked at them for a few seconds, face completely deadpan.

"Getting friendly with the newbie, Sasaki?"

"Yep~! You have a problem with it, Blanc?"

"No, but you're going to be late if you keep this up. Come on."

She grabbed Sasaki's arm, and dragged her, and Yoshika, along with the crowd.

* * *

After releasing her to take a brief shower, Sasaki showed Yoshika around Avalon Site.

"Sooo~ooo, this is the operatives' mess!"

She saw Blanc and a Orussian man by a table, loudly arguing.

"GODDAMNIT, IVANOV. WHERE. IS. MY. FOOD."

"FOR SAKE OF SHIT, BLANC. I AM NOT OF TAKE YOUR FOOD. WHY WOULD I WANT YOUR FOOD."

She also saw another woman, seated at a table behind them, eating food from three trays with a wide grin on her face.

* * *

"And this is the armory!"

She stalked over to a particular shelf, lined with several identical guns.

"You'll need these, and this too..."

She forcefully pulled a thick, heavy white vest onto Yoshika, and strapped a large medical kit onto her back, before moving over to some other shelves.

"Hmmm~m... You're pretty small, so... Assault Carbine it is for you!"

She shoved a large gun into Yoshika's hands.

Yoshika stared down at the gun in her hands.  
"W-Will I really have to use this? To kill?"

Sasaki looked at her, head tilted in confusion.  
"Of course. Why wouldn't you...Oh."

She crouched down, coming face to face with Yoshika.  
"You're nervous about having to kill, right?"

Yoshika nodded, and hung her head in shame.  
"Y-yes. Sorry. Not very soldierlike, is it?"

Sasaki smiled.  
"Don't be. That's normal, especially since you haven't been through basic training."

She took hold of Yoshika's shoulders, and brought her eyes up to meet her own.

"But, listen, Yoshika.  
"When you're in the field, you will be expected to kill. You don't have to like it, but you do have to do it.  
"You can't hesitate in combat, okay? Or else people could die."

Yoshika nodded, then blanched.  
"D-Die?"

"Yes. Their lives could depend on you in more than one way."

"B-But I... I can't be trusted with something like _that_! I-"

Sasaki gave Yoshika a brief, tight hug, quieting her, before continuing to speak.

"Yoshika. I know it seems overwhelming. Beneath whatever masks we put on, we're all worried about the same thing, too.  
"But we go on anyway. We have to. It's our duty.  
"Besides, the Commander picked you for a reason, and I saw you in action that night.  
"You have the will to do it. You just don't realize it yet."

Yoshika stared at her.

"I do?"

Sasaki gave a smile, a smile of warmth and trust and warm fuzzy feelings that made Yoshika think that everything would be all right.

"Of course you do. I have faith in you."

* * *

Shiro stood on the raised back platform of the command center, coffee in hand.  
He heard footsteps. Turning, he saw Central Officer Joan Bradford walk into the room.

"Good morning, Bradford."

The former Witch blinked, barely suppressing a yawn.

"'Morning, Commander. Since I'm still half-asleep, I'm guessing the scopes are clear?"

"Thus far, yes."

"Good, good. So... I hear you recruited a Witch yesterday."

"Yes, I did. Your point?"

"Aren't you worried about her? This unit is nothing like the Witch Corps, is she going to be able to handle it?"

Shiro paused for a moment.  
"You do have valid concerns. However, I have faith that she will be able to adapt. She's demonstrated a willingness to ignore her own health for the sake of others, which I think will go a long way for her in combat."

Bradford looked at him dubiously.  
"If you say so, Commander. Where is she, anyways?"

"I believe Lieutenant Sasaki is wi-"

A technician sitting at a console slightly below interrupted them.

"Um, sirs? The detection net's picked up UFO contacts."

Bradford snapped her gaze to meet the technician's eyes.

"Count? Altitude? Location?"

"Sir, 2 contacts at low altitude, about 2 miles southwest of RAF Fowlmere."

"Size? Probable class?"

"Sir, the listening post reports the contact's power signature is small and matches the Scout class."

Shiro took a small sip of his coffee. Time to start the day.  
"Go for it, Bradford."

She nodded.  
"Affirmative, Commander."

She snapped her eyes to the technicians in the room, and began to belt out orders.  
"Sound the alarm. Scramble Xenonauts One through Three. Put Xenonauts Four and Five on standby."

* * *

Flight Officer Siddiqui of the 115th XFW was lounging in the base's rec room when the alarm sounded.

The base PA system blared out orders for the Interceptor pilots.  
"Attention. UFO contacts detected. Xenonauts One through Three are to scramble and prepare to intercept. Four and Five are to remain on standby."

In less than a minute he was racing for his plane in the hangar.  
The 115th Experimental Fighter Wing, the "Xenonauts", was X-COM's very own air force, dedicated to taking down UFOs.

Their main workhorse craft was, for now, the I-53 "Nimbus" Experimental Interceptor Aircraft.  
Its designers had opted to focus on raw speed and weapons capacity, given the particulars of the enemies it would go up against.  
It carried six "Sparrowhawk" Heavy Unguided Air-to-Air rockets on its wings, and could break the sound barrier on a good day, even if fully loaded.  
In exchange, though, they had forsaken both maneuverability and survivability- the Nimbus had the durability of wet tissue paper and relied heavily on the pilot's ability to dodge.

It was a glass cannon; most engagements ended in something going down in flames: the UFO, an Interceptor pilot, or occassionally both.

Siddiqui jumped into the cockpit of his own Nimbus, glancing briefly at the empty spot at the end of the Hangar- the parking area for the late Xenonaut Six.  
He took a deep breath, and focused on his plane. No sense lamenting the dead right now.

Taxiing onto the runway, he watched his compatriots soar into the sky ahead of him.

"Xenonaut Three, taking off."

* * *

Flight Lieutenant Eriksson, callsign Xenonaut One, took the lead for this interception.  
"Central, this is Xenonaut One, I have sighted the enemy. Engaging."

Flight Lieutenant Gutierrez followed just behind him, and Siddiqui hung back, covering both of them.

Xenonauts One and Two took off in hot pursuit of the UFO, loosing rockets and weaving through fire.  
Eventually, one of the rockets made its mark, another following right behind it.

The UFO began to smoke, and flew slower, diving for the ground.  
Xenonaut Two took a nearly vertical dive towards the stricken UFO, firing his last two missiles at it.

The UFO took both missiles and went down, crashing into a forest below.

"Central, this is Xenonaut Two, bandit confirmed downed."

Siddiqui angled his nose down to get a better view of the airspace below him.  
He could have sworn he saw something down there.

* * *

Bradford grinned.

"Copy that, Xenonaut Two. What about the other bandit?"

* * *

Xenonaut Two keyed his microphone, now very confused and slightly worried.  
"Uh, Central. Other bandit?"

"Affirmative, Xenonaut Two. You're intercepting _two_ Scout-class UFOs."

Xenonaut One interrupted both of them.  
"Copy that, Central. Two, Three, let's double back and sweep the area. The missing bandit may have-"

A burst of plasma came up to meet Xenonaut Two from below, bisecting the craft.  
The two halves of the plane went down in a fountain-shaped cloud of smoke.

"-Shit, Xenonaut Three, scatter!"

Xenonaut Three looked out, and sighted a small disc of shining yellow-white amidst the sea of green.  
The other UFO was coming up to meet Xenonaut One.  
Xenonaut Three dove to meet it from behind.

"One, bandit on your six below you!"

Xenonaut One immediately went into a turning dive to evade, and Three fired two rockets from behind the UFO.  
The first rocket was off-target, passing under the alien craft.  
The UFO had barely leveled out to continue pursuit of Xenonaut One when the second rocket hit its rear end.

It immediately broke off, flipping over to do a quick direction reversal.

The two aircraft, human and alien, now charged head-on towards each other.  
A quick twitch of the control stick saved Siddiqui's life as green fire passed just over his cockpit window.

The crafts continued to speed towards each other, and Siddiqui dodged in a vaguely sinusoidal fashion as he closed the distance.  
Siddiqui waited until the very last moment, before loosing every rocket he had.

Though one rocket went wide, the remaining three were aimed true, and the UFO went up in a spectacular explosion.

"Central, this is Xenonaut Three, bandit two is down."

* * *

As Xenonauts One and Three returned to base, the members of Strike-Four assembled in the briefing room.

Shiro addressed them all.

"Strike-Four, as of today you have a new member."  
"This is Specialist Yoshika Miyafuji, of the Fuso Empire. She will be your team's new medic."

One of the assembled soldiers raised an eyebrow.  
"I'm guessing she's a Witch of some kind?"

"Correct. A Healwitch, to be precise. Keep her safe, and she will keep you alive. Understood?"

A chorus of "Yes, sir"s and "Understood"s came from the members of Strike-Four.

"Now. Our interceptors have downed a Scout UFO in Southern Britannia. Strike-Four is being sent in to clear it..."

* * *

Yoshika sat in the Skyranger, on her way to her first combat mission.  
Her hands were shaking, and she didn't know whether it was out of nervousness or because the ride was bumpy.

Lieutenant Sasaki, sitting beside her, gave her a brief hug.  
Yoshika started, shocked from the sudden physical contact.

Lance Corporal Frost laughed from the opposite side of the Skyranger.  
"You seem to be ignoring people's personal space even more than usual, Lieutenant."

"I know, I know, but look at her! She's just so cu~ute! And she's nervous and scared and don't you just wanna hug her?"

Sasaki hugged her even tighter.  
"Don't worry, Miya-chan- can I call you that?- we're not gonna let anyone hurt you!"

Big Sky's voice came over the Skyranger's intercom.  
"Attention Strike-Four, we have visual on the crash site, setting down. Get ready."

The Lieutenant let go of Yoshika, and stood up.  
"Alright. You heard Big Sky, get ready!"

* * *

[0712 Hours, May 8, 1944]

Yoshika followed Sasaki out of the Skyranger.  
The UFO had come down in a relatively sparse portion of the forest, and Big Sky had landed along a nearby stream.  
Up ahead she could see a clearing where the UFO had apparently crash-landed.  
She could smell the smoke from burning trees and grass.

Sasaki motioned for them to follow her.  
"Follow me. And be quiet."

* * *

It was less than a minute before Sasaki motioned for them to stop.

Yoshika could hear rustling sounds from up ahead. The team quickly took cover behind trees, rocks, and a nearby ridge.

From behind a cluster of trees emerged a small, hunched over grey alien- one of the ones she saw in Fuso.  
Accompanying it were three small, round, flying, mechanical devices she hadn't seen before.

She crouched behind the ridge, next to Sasaki, who quickly, quietly peeked at the group of aliens.

"A Sectoid and Drones, " she muttered.

As the team continued to observe, the aliens continued to move.  
They seemed to be heading in their general direction.

Sasaki waited for them to enter a particularly clear part of the general area, before popping up from behind her ridge and opening fire on the aliens, with the rest of the team following suit soon after.

One of the drones was killed immediately, exploding in midair and falling to the ground as a black metal wreck.  
The rest of the group scattered, the drones flying higher and the Sectoid dashing for cover behind a nearby tree.

The aliens fired back, bursts of white-hot energy and green plasma flying their way.

Most shots missed their targets, but one from a Drone, hit Specialist Zielinski square in the chest. He dropped to the ground, clutching his chest.

Yoshika was about to run to him, but Sasaki grabbed her by the collar just before she left her cover behind.  
A burst of green plasma passed right in front of her eyes, just beyond the edge of the ridge.  
The heat and energy radiating from it had warmed her face all over, and she quickly scrambled back to Sasaki, who muttered furiously to her.

"Not yet, not yet! Wait until the area's secure, then tend to the wounded!"

She fired a burst from her rifle, which hit one of the drones solidly. It too exploded and fell to the ground.  
She saw Ustinov toss a small round object- a grenade, she realized- at the Sectoid, still behind its thick tree.

The grenade exploded, and Yoshika could see the Sectoid fly back a few feet and finally fall to the ground, still.  
Fire from Frost and Private Ustinov finished off the remaining Drone.

* * *

With the area reasonably secure for now, Yoshika dashed to where Zielinski lay.

Kneeling on the ground in front of him, she turned the man over, onto his back, and inspected his wounds.

The bolt had gone straight through his combat vest and uniform, and a large bleeding hole had been burnt into his chest.  
He was still breathing, and didn't seem to have an exit wound, however.

She quickly cleaned up the area around the wound and applied a bandage.  
Then, she began to heal him magically, her dog ears and tail sprouting as the man began to glow.

He was conscious again within a minute, and the wound was somewhat healed, as well.  
Yoshika could tell from simple observation that it was nowhere near fully healed, but it would do until they could get back to base.

Zielinski looked up at her, blinked, and looked down at his bandaged chest.

"Wow. You are... uh, as they say... really something, eh?"

She helped him to his feet, and Sasaki tapped her shoulder.  
"You see how the aliens were all grouped together? We call that a 'pod'. They tend to act on their own, but oftentimes they back each other up."

Yoshika nodded, and heard something in the distance; some kind of high-pitched screech, like an animal call.

"...Like that. Be on alert, the enemy knows we're here now."

They continued their advance along the stream, towards the UFO.

* * *

They finally saw the UFO after a few minutes of walking.  
The ground around where it had come down was barren of life and strewn with debris from the crash.

They had barely begun to walk along the debris field when they suddenly came under fire.  
Bursts of plasma crisscrossed where they once stood, as they reflexively dived into the nearest available cover.

* * *

Yoshika stood behind a particularly large section of broken UFO hull, about as tall as she was.

Up ahead, behind some rocks on an elevated ridge, stood three tall, thin, almost human-looking aliens.  
They seemed to have on suits and glasses- they seemed more at home in an office instead of a battlefield.

Zielinski was somewhere behind her, Frost was ahead of her, and Ustinov and Rahmanov were to Frost's left.

She could see Sasaki, closer to the aliens than she was, pull an orange-grey tube free from her vest.  
She pulled a pin on it, and tossed it up, behind the enemy cover.

A second later it exploded, and Yoshika could see streaks of some kind emerging from the explosion.  
One of the thin aliens fell to the ground where it was, perforated by the grenade's shrapnel.

The rest recoiled, but held their ground and remained standing.

The rest of her teammates fired uselessly at the alien position, shots streaking past the aliens or impacting against the tall rocks.  
Even through this, she could see one of the aliens stand and begin to fire rapidly at Sasaki, who yelled out,  
"Hey, a little help here?! I'm pinned down!"

The other alien gracefully leaped out, over its cover, down to the ground, and _behind_ Sasaki.

As it whirled around, Yoshika suddenly realized that Sasaki's cover wouldn't protect her from an enemy- not from this angle.

There wasn't anyone else around her that could help, it seemed. Except for her.

In one swift motion she raised her carbine. It had to have been hurt from the explosion.  
She carefully moved up, just behind the alien.  
The alien was taking its time, lining up the shot, unaware of Yoshika behind it.

She braced herself.

She took a breath.  
 _No hesitation._

She fired.

* * *

The recoil surprised her, and she almost dropped the assault carbine- but she landed her shots.

The alien seemed to fall head over heels on its way to the ground, and it released a large plume of green-blue gas as it died.  
Yellow alien blood splattered Yoshika as she perforated it with bullets.

* * *

Sasaki was too busy being pinned down by a Thin Man to notice this.

She futilely tried to return fire, but her shots went wide- she couldn't poke her head up to see for very long.

* * *

Lance Corporal Frost took Privates Ustinov and Rahmanov around the sides of the engagement, trying to flank the other alien while Sasaki kept it occupied to the front.

As they took positions on the alien's flanks, Frost elbowed Private Ustinov.  
Shakily, Ustinov raised his rifle, and fired a burst. It went wide.  
PFC Rahmanov fired next, first clipping the alien, then hitting it directly.

It went down, a burst of Thin Man poison marking its death.

He heard a screech from behind him. He quickly turned around in a panic- and realized that the other Thin Man was missing.

 _Shit, where did it go?!_

He finally caught sight of it, behind Sasaki, who had also turned around and had only just noticed the alien.  
It raised its plasma gun, aiming for the exposed Sasaki-

The sounds of gunfire and the muzzle flash behind the Thin Man told him that it had been dealt with.  
He saw the thin alien flip over and fall to the ground, kicking up a plume of poison gas.

From behind the gas cloud, he saw Specialist Zielinski.  
"Holy crap man, thanks for tha-"

Zielinski shook his head, "No, it was not me, " he said, pointing to Specialist Miyafuji, "it was her."

The little girl seemed a bit shaken, but still gripped her weapon, a carbine, tightly.  
Her white combat vest was covered with yellow blood.

Frost walked up alongside her and gave her a good slap on the back.  
"Good to see the Commander didn't just bring you in for your Witchiness."

Sasaki still had a smile on her face, even after being caught off-guard and nearly getting killed.  
"See? I told you you could do it, Miya-chan! You're really one of us now!"

She paused for a bit, looked at the UFO, and said,  
"Come on, there's probably not that many left. They usually only send, what, 3 pods to crew these ships?"

* * *

They gathered around the outer walls of the UFO, which was about the size of a small building.

Al Frost looked to his commanding officer.  
"What are we going to do, Lieutenant?"

Saya thought for a moment, and tried to peer through the illuminated force-field entrances to the UFO.  
"This UFO isn't that big, " she replied, "and we could probably get a good portion of the UFO with a rocket blast."

"Then we surround whoever's inside and try to take 'em out as fast as we can," she continued.

* * *

They all took a minute to situate themselves on all three of the craft's entrances.

Frost had taken the front entrance. Sasaki and Yoshika had taken the right, and Zielinski and the PFCs were on the left.

They all steadied themselves, and waited for the opening shot- in this case, one of Frost's rockets.

Yoshika faintly heard a few alien beeps from the "front" of the UFO, and shortly after, a large _woosh_ and an explosion.  
She quickly passed her hand through the forcefield door like she was told to, and it disappeared, letting her see the inside.

Through the clearing smoke she could see two half-mechanical, flying... _things_ that roared and howled.  
Below them stood an orange-yellow figure, whose center glowed brightly.  
The rocket seemed to have taken out two of the flying aliens already, and the others were scrambling to cover.

Sasaki pulled another grenade from her vest.  
She pulled the pin, threw it into the UFO, and pushed Yoshika's head down, shielding her eyes.

From behind Sasaki's hand she could see a blinding flash come from inside the UFO.  
Sasaki quickly removed her hand and pushed into the UFO.

From her position by the UFO doors, Yoshika could see the two Privates focusing their fire on one of the floating aliens.  
Though most of their shots failed to hit the alien, a handful managed to hit, and the alien went down.

The remaining aliens fired wildly, apparently having been blinded by the flash.  
Zielinski fired a quick burst at the one floating alien left, quickly bringing it down with relatively accurate fire.

Yoshika moved up into the UFO, closer to the one alien left.  
She brought her carbine up again, and laid the sights right on the glowing orb in its center.

Without hesitation, she fired.

* * *

[Mission Summary: Operation "First Spark"]

Alien Combatants Killed:  
3x Drone  
4x Floater  
1x Outsider  
1x Sectoid  
3x Thin Man

Alien Combatants Captured:  
None

Alien Artifacts Recovered:  
1x Alien Navigational Computer  
1x Alien Navigational Computer (Damaged)  
1x Alien Power Source (Damaged)  
Alien Alloys  
Alien Weapons Fragments  
Elerium-115

Miscellaneous:  
None

Operatives Status:  
Lt-2. Saya Sasaki put on fatigue roster (4 days)  
LCPL Al Frost put on fatigue roster (3 days)  
SPEC Piotr Zielinski lightly wounded (5 days)  
SPEC Yoshika Miyafuji put on fatigue roster (3 days)  
Erik Ustinov promoted to Specialist rank, put on fatigue roster (3 days)  
Namdar Romanov promoted to Specialist rank, put on fatigue roster (3 days)

Result:  
The crashed UFO in Southern Britannia was recovered successfully with minimal casualties or injuries.

* * *

[2022 Hours - May 8, 1944]  
[Operatives' Bar - Avalon Site / Headquarters, 115th Experimental]

Yoshika settled comfortably into Sasaki's lap as the senior operative hugged her tight.  
Sasaki raised a glass. Yoshika raised hers, as did the rest of Strike-Four.

"To our new operatives!"

Blanc, the leader of Strike-Three, looked down into her own glass, quietly.  
"Why am I even here?"

Sasaki pulled her close with the same hand that held her glass of alcohol.  
"Because I want you to, silly! Come o~oon, what is with you shy girls?"

Yoshika sipped out of her own glass, filled with carbonated beverage.  
 _This place has good cola..._

She looked up, at the members of Strike-Four around her, cheering her and the other two new members on.  
 _...and good company._

She smiled.  
 _I'm part of X-COM now, huh?_

 _I think... I think I'll be okay now, mother... father._

* * *

[2022 Hours - May 8, 1944]  
[Landing Strip - Mont St. Michel / Headquarters, 501st JFW]

Lynette sat on the edge of the landing strip, alone.

She didn't really have anywhere else to go, or anyone else to go to.

The Major was busy flying back to base.  
Barkhorn didn't seem to like her very much.  
Hartmann, Lucchini, and Yeager were probably asleep.  
Litvyak was out on patrol, not to mention Juutilainen would probably kill her.  
Clostermann was... Clostermann.  
And the Wing Commander was probably busy.

She slumped over slightly.

 _Do I really belong here?_

She looked up, at the vast, empty sea beyond her.

 _...probably not._

 _I can't do much of anything, can I?_

 _The others are so much more experienced, have better magical control, are better shots, are faster, can do literally anything and everything better than I could!_

Tears began to fall from her eyes.

That night, Lynette Bishop cried alone.

* * *

In another life, Minna might have noticed this, might have been silently watching her.

Instead, she was busy doing administrative work.

She spoke into the telephone, looking over the dossier for who should have been their newest recruit.  
"What? She's missing?"

Mio Sakamoto was on the other end of the line.  
"It's true. Her home seems to have been destroyed, and every record I could find about her seems to have suddenly become classified at the highest levels.

"There was only one record I could find, and I had to go through questionably-legal sources to even get a hold of it."

"Questionably legal? Mio, what did you do-"

"It involved an old friend of mine who was in intelligence, it wasn't anything too serious Minna."

"Mio, I won't be able to help you if you get in trouble for this. But... anyways. Go on."

"My friend didn't find much, but there was something in there. A clue, I think.

"She's apparently been recruited by the '115th Experimental Combat Unit', whatever that is."

* * *

 **End Chapter 3.**

* * *

 **XCOM Information Supplements:**

 _[XCOM Research Division Synopsis: Alien Weapons Technology Fragments]_  
 _18/03/1944_  
 _Written By: Dr. M Vahlen_

The new invaders have proven a mastery of physical laws beyond anything we could imagine.

While the alien self-destruct systems and the... enthusiasm of our troops have rendered any samples we could study fragmented and broken, the small bits and pieces of technology we could recover have already advanced the sciences by untold years, and possibly decades.

In particular, we've noticed one particularly interesting example of alien technology: essentially, it acts as a vacuum tube would, but is not only completely solid, but is also microscopic in nature. We've already isolated and replicated it with larger-scale terrestrial materials; this technology alone has profound implications for all of our current technologies, from radio communications to cryptography.

* * *

 _[XCOM Research Division Synopsis: Advanced Radar Technology]_  
 _08/04/1944_  
 _Written By: Dr. M Vahlen_

We've managed to update many of our specialized radar sites to use alien technology, adapted to use terrestrial materials.

In particular, we've noticed that alien power sources produce telltale emissions, which we believe to be gravimetric in nature, that can be easily detected from tens to hundreds of miles away using specialized equipment.

While this will significantly increase the time required to set up functioning detection networks should our range of operations expand, this does give us the capability to accurately determine both the size, strength, and position of any UFOs within our radar coverage area, which now includes all of Brittania as well as much of the surrounding sea.

* * *

 _[XCOM Research Division Synopsis: Advanced Electronics]_  
 _26/04/1944_  
 _Written By: Dr. M Vahlen, Dr. A Turing_

We think we've nearly narrowed down the basic principles of how many of the alien technologies work.

Essentially, they utilize what seem to be miniature computing devices that fit within the frames of all of their devices- from their communications systems to their weapons. These devices are not only smaller than anything we could have built before, they are also much, much faster.  
I estimate that, without the alien technology to guide our research, it would have taken humanity at least 60 to 70 years before even reaching the concepts, prototypes, and designs we have now.

We've managed to replicate the result in-house, and with the help of Dr. Alan Turing, we've managed to expand the use of these devices into a whole new field of applied mathematics: computer science.

The younger members of the science and engineering teams have also created a number of interesting games using our recreations of the alien "computers".  
While I would never condone using wartime materials for recreational purposes, several of these games seem to have potential as training or tactical simulations.

One in particular, created by a couple of young engineers calling themselves the "Axis of Fire", seems to be a fairly accurate and realistic simulation of tactical ground operations. Should you wish to evaluate or use this "tactical simulation tool", you can find it, and its creators, in Engineering.

While it will undoubtedly take time to fully grasp and exploit this newly developed technology, the interceptor pilots can expect massive changes to their cockpits quite soon, and given some more time we may be able to design a conventional alternative to the magical Intercoms.

This research also opens the doors to examining alien technology in further detail.  
For example, we may now be able to finally begin analysis of the alien energy weapons.


	4. The Unfriendly Skies

**Chapter 4:** The Unfriendly Skies

* * *

[1132 Hours, May 15, 1944]  
[Avalon Site]

Lance Corporal Yoshika Miyafuji walked through Avalon Site's hallways with something resembling unease.  
She wasn't quite sure, but there was a lingering feeling in her head, that someone else should be here with-

She bumped into someone.  
"Ah, sorry, sorry."

The Commander spoke.  
"No, no, it's my fault. Sorry for bumping into you."

he put a hand to his chin for a second, then gave Yoshika a stack of papers.  
"Actually, since you seem to be headed that way, could you deliver these papers to Engineering? Feel free to read them as you go, everyone's going to know about this by the end of the day anyways."

* * *

[Engineering Workshops, Avalon Site]

Engineering was a new place to Yoshika.  
It was hot, and smelled like sweat and chemicals, but the chemicals were unfamiliar to her, unlike hospital rooms or doctors' offices.

She stopped to ask a nearby engineer where to go.  
"Oh, from the Commander? You're probably going to want to give that to one of the Heads. Follow me."

After a bit of walking, they came to an office by the workshops' sides.  
"You're looking for either Doctor Shen or First Lieutenant Hartmann. One of them should be in there.", the engineer said as he walked off.

She opened the door to the office and walked inside.

The office was cool compared to the hot workshops outside.

She saw a small crowd of engineers standing by a whiteboard. She could see an older man giving a presentation.

"-So by affixing the new cooled beam optics systems, we can achieve higher total energy outputs, though at a cost in alien alloys and weight.  
"That concludes the presentation. You're dismissed."

With that, the crowd dispersed.

Yoshika walked up to the man by the board.  
He seemed quite old, with what little of his hair remained a whitish-grey.  
He wore a green jacket and red tie, and the badge on his chest identified him as "Doctor Raymond Shen."

"Um, sir?"

Dr. Shen turned, looking around at eye level for someone, before looking down.  
"Oh. Lance Corporal... Miyafuji, was it? Can I help you?"

"The Commander wanted me to deliver these papers to you."

He accepted the papers and gave the front page a quick read.  
"Equipment Work Orders, hm? For... another set of laser emitter modules. And a Foundry Work Order. I understand."

He nodded to her.  
"Okay then. You should take these, " he said, handing her the Foundry Work Order, " to Hartmann, who is probably in the Hangar. It's just past the workshops and the Foundry."

He pointed out the door and to the right.  
"Just keep going, you'll see the sign. Look for a blonde girl about your age, with glasses."

* * *

[Hangar, Avalon Site]  
Flight Lieutenant Siddiqui looked at the large box of glass and alien alloy.

"That is a... laser cannon, yes?"

First Lieutenant Ursula Hartmann nodded eagerly.  
"Yes! That should be at least twice as powerful as the current Sparrowhawk rockets you pilots use!"

"Is filled with much alien alloy and Elerium, yes?"

"Well, we tried to conserve resources while making it, but yes."

The pilot looked over the box again, then stepped back warily.  
"It will not explode and kill me, yes?"

Ursula frowned and grumbled, staring down at her feet.  
"No, it will _not_ explode. Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

Muttering softly to herself, she continued.  
"It's not like I make my designs explode on purpose..."

She looked up again.  
"Anyways, since we've already finished most of the noncombat testing, Central would like you to try these in combat.  
"She should have most of its combat specifications for you in the Command Center."

Siddiqui glanced at the Laser Cannon one last time, then shrugged and walked off towards the Command Center.

* * *

Yoshika stepped into the Hangar.

Six planes lay inside, some more damaged than others; she could see parts laying around, everywhere- some steel and a handful made of alien alloy.  
Men in flight suits lounged around, chatting amongst themselves.

Looking to the third plane in the hangar, she found her target.  
She seemed to be watching a few technicians attach something onto the center of aircraft's underside- a large box-like device, almost  
as long as she was tall.

"Um, Hartmann-san?"

The girl turned around.

"Yes?"

* * *

[2212 Hours, May 15, 1944]  
[10,500 ft. over the Brittanian Channel]

The sun was barely starting to cross the horizon as the transport plane flew back to Mont Saint Michel, just above the rainclouds.

Mio was fuming. She had not said a word during the whole flight.  
"Mio, why are you so worried about this new recruit? It seems unlike you."

"It's a duty I owe to Ichiro."

"Ichiro? Ichiro... oh. Miyafuji. "

Soft singing sounds came over the radio- Sanya must have spotted them.

Minna tapped the intercom in her ear.  
"Ah, hello, Sanya."

The Orussian girl stayed silent, but passed close to the transport, looking into the windows.  
Minna turned to the window behind her and waved.

Blushing, Sanya dived into the clouds.

Chuckling lightly, Minna turned from the window.  
"Her singing voice is very nice, isn't it?"

Abruptly, the singing stopped.  
The report came in a timid voice over the radio.

"Someone is looking this way."

* * *

[2212 Hours, May 15, 1944]  
[5500 ft. over the Brittanian Channel]

"Xenonaut Squadron, be advised, bogey at angels eight. Sniff it out first, the listening post can't get a signature 'cause of the rain."

"Copy that, Central. Climbing to angels eight."

Mio lifted her eyepatch, and looked out both sides of the transport.  
"Repeat that more clearly, and speak louder."

"Sorry. There are four unidentified aircraft following us from the direction of Sirius. They appear to be at eight thousand feet."

Minna rubbed her temples.  
"Is it Neuroi? Without Strikers, we can't do anything.  
"They've been getting stronger and more unpredictable by the week. If this keeps up I don't know what we'll do."

She keyed into her Intercom,  
"Sanya. Buy us time until backup arrives."

"Yes, ma'am."

She flicked the Fliegerhammer's safety off.  
"I will attempt to delay the pursuers."

Minna called after her on the radio,  
"Don't do anything rash!"

* * *

[Angels Eight, Brittanian Channel]

"Central, this is Xenonaut-Five. The storm's thick as all hell, but I think it's a-"

A loud explosion just behind him rattled his craft.  
Instinctively, he dived down, to Angels Seven, just below the cloud ceiling.  
"Oh what the hell, what was that?"

"Xenonaut-Five, say again?"

Xenonaut-Five looked around, out the cockpit windows. He could barely see anything out the window in the dark rain, much less where the shots came from.  
"Central, something conventional exploded just behind me, and I don't think it was our ordinance. Are there any other air assets operating in the area?"

Suddenly, a large burst of static came through his headset. His ears rang for a bit after he ripped the headphones off of his ears.  
After turning down the radio's volume level, he tried flipping through different channels.  
Each one was jammed.

Distracted as he was by the friendly fire and the radio, he failed to notice the plasma shots coming down to meet him from ahead.

* * *

There was one frequency that wasn't being jammed, however.  
"One unidentified aircraft destroyed. I can sense debris falling from the sky."

"Good work, Sanya."

A brief pained look passed over Sanya's face.  
"They are attempting to jam radio communications on other channels. This frequency is not being blocked."

Twisting around, Sanya continued her hunt.

* * *

Flight Lieutenant Siddiqui was miserable.

It was cold, dark, their radios were jammed, they couldn't see shit, and they were being fired upon by their own allies.  
He couldn't even see the other members of his flight.

And to top it all off, they'd given him a weapon that only worked at _close range_. In a low-visibility fight.  
At least they'd said it would be more powerful than the Sparrowhawks.

Something exploded just ahead of him, to his left.  
He saw a brief glimmer of something that was an off-yellow color to his right.

He turned to follow it, and his sharp reflexes saved him again as a bolt of plasma grazed his right wing.

* * *

Sanya watched her targets dance around in the thunderstorm.

They had scattered- one had broken off, presumably to perform a flanking attack of some kind, and the other two continued their pursuit of the transport.

Something felt off to Sanya, though, with two of the unidentified targets.  
She shrugged it off, and continued hunting Neuroi.

* * *

Xenonaut-Three could see it now, the UFO just ahead of him.  
He figured that if he could see it even in this mess, he was close enough to use the Laser Cannons.

He let loose with the Laser Cannon, scoring two solid hits. Already he could see the craft smoking.  
A couple of his shots went wide, though, punching up and through the cloud layer.

* * *

Minna cringed as she heard Sanya report laser fire.  
"It really is Neuroi. We're going to have to set up a larger night patrol."

Mio looked at her.  
"They really are getting smarter, then..."

A laser streaked past the side windows, and the pilot began evasive maneuvers.

Sanya continued to fire as lasers came up to meet her from within the clouds.

* * *

Both Xenonaut-Three and the UFO moved wildly, dodging both each other and their unseen assailant.  
Siddiqui felt the I-53's frame shudder as he pushed the throttles to their limits and beyond, activating WEP.

The UFO seemed perfectly content to stay within the cloud level- and suddenly Siddiqui realized what it was doing.  
He thought from the viewpoint of the flyer above, probably some kind of Witch.  
 _Lasers. From an unseen opponent, in the cloud layer. They think we are Neuroi! Fuckers!_

He dodged right as something exploded right in front of him, blinding him for a second.  
 _That is far too close. I must end this quick and break off fast._

The UFO had chosen to stay its course, however, and already Siddiqui was lining up a shot...

* * *

Sanya sighed in frustration.  
She had two rockets left. She had to make these count.

She had almost hit with the last one. Just a bit more correction and it would go down, hopefully.

She took careful aim again...

* * *

Siddiqui squeezed the fire trigger as hard as he could for a second, the laser cannon firing four shots in rapid succession.

He could see the UFO exploding in front of him, bits and pieces trailing to the ground.

* * *

Sanya's trigger finger quickly twitched twice, two rockets speeding for the unseen targets in the cloud layer...

Something broke apart below, a bright flash of orange just inside the clouds.

* * *

Siddiqui pushed the control yoke as far forward as he could, and the aircraft began a rapid descent.  
A loud explosion came from above him, and he tried to push the yoke even further.

He heard something impact the roof of his Interceptor, but he paid it no mind as he continued dropping out of the sky.

* * *

One of her rockets hadn't detonated properly- Sanya had only seen one detonation take place.  
She was out of ammunition, now.

Fortunately, she sensed her last target drop altitude rapidly and turn back.  
The fourth one had left long ago.  
She'd shaken them, for now.

She reported back to Minna.  
"The unidentified aircraft have left."

"I see. Good work, Sanya."

* * *

The radio jamming had dropped as soon as the UFO exploded.

"-nonaut Squadron, Xenonaut Squadron, this is Central, do you read?"

"Central, this is Xenonaut-Three. Bandit is down, exploded in midair."

"Xenonaut-Three, what the hell happened up there? Where's Five and Six?"

* * *

[2300 Hours, May 15, 1944]  
[Pilot Debriefing, Avalon Site]

F.O. MacLeod, also known as Xenonaut-Six, gave his recounting of events.  
"So that's when Xenonaut-Five and I dropped out of the clouds. My first thought was that it was some weird new alien weapon.  
"But no, I realize that it couldn't have been, alien weapons would have been far stronger."

Wing Commander Bradford nodded.  
"Yes, I remember Xenonaut-Five reporting a conventional explosion just behind him. Continue."

"Well, we were both out of the clouds, trying to get a sense of what the fuck was going on, when suddenly a plasma shot just comes down from inside the cloud, like green lighting, and nails Laitinen right in the cockpit.  
"I would've nearly ran into the poor bastard's flaming wreck myself, if I hadn't rolled just in time.  
"Well, after that, I didn't have a chance in hell of finding Siddiqui or the UFO, with the jamming and the clouds, so after a bit I just decided to fly back before I got shot while loitering, like Lai."

"Um, excuse me?"  
The three heads in the room turned to the new, blonde-haired one by the door.

"Oh, Hartmann. Come in.  
"So, anything to report?"

First Lieutenant Hartmann held a clipboard in her hands, with several pictures.  
"Um... okay, here. Flight Lieutenant Siddiqui, we recovered an undetonated rocket lodged in the top portion of your fuselage.  
"We've already removed it and defused it, and as it turns out, the rocket is from a prototype I designed about a year ago."

She pulled out a blueprint of a rocket launcher and a rocket.  
"I called it the Fliegerhammer, but there's only one Witch I know of that uses it in combat- Sanya Litvyak, of the 501st JFW."

Siddiqui suddenly spoke up.  
"Ah. So it was a Witch. I knew it, and it also explains why they shot at me."

Bradford's eyes widened in realization.  
"An unidentified aircraft using lasers- they thought you were Neuroi."

Siddiqui filled in the rest for her.  
"I remember them jamming us, as well. All of the standard channels, blocked. We could not identify ourselves to the Witches.  
"And they stayed in the clouds, so seeing could not work."

Bradford stood up.  
"Okay. I'll speak to the Commander about this."

* * *

[2300 Hours, May 15, 1944]  
[Pilot Debriefing, Headquarters, 501st JFW]

Trude put forward the question on everyone's mind.  
"So nobody but Sanya saw the Neuroi?"

Mio replied, "They stayed in the clouds and wouldn't come out. None of us could get a good look at them."

Lynette, in a rare display of confidence, put forward a suggestion.  
"Maybe it was a shy Neuroi!"

The rest of the 501st JFW stared back at her with expressions of exasperation, confusion, frustration, and exhaustion.

Lynette shrunk back.  
"O-or.. maybe not?"

She thought she heard someone mutter under her breath, "fucking rookie."  
"...Sorry."

Perinne sipped her tea and glared at the Brittanian.  
"Just as I expected, from our resident naive little girl. Why even bother contributing with something that stupid?"

Lynette shrunk even further into herself.  
Minna stood up, yelling.  
"Flight Officer Clostermann! That was completely out of line!"

Erica rolled over on the couch, head resting on the armrest.  
"She's kinda right though.. but didn't she say the Neuroi kept missing badly? Does that ever happen?  
"... was it even the Neuroi at all?"

Minna thought back. She'd seen the reports, heard the rumors, of things in the dark of night, at the highest altitudes.  
Aircraft that were neither human or, if the tales were to be believed, Neuroi.  
They probably weren't true, of course. Fog of war, misremembered events, all of that were probably to blame.  
Right?  
"...do we even know what they're here for? Until we know, we have no way of knowing what Neuroi will appear in the future.  
"We've already seen them changing even now."

She sighed out of exhaustion.

* * *

[0034 Hours, May 16, 1944]  
[Command Center, Avalon Site]

Shiro stood over a large map of Europa, laid out on a table just behind where he usually stood while waiting for intercepts.  
"Bradford, do you have the reports I asked you for?"

"Yeah, here, " she replied, handing over the reports.

He put the reports on a corner of the table, and sorted them into two stacks.  
One stack held UFO detection reports. The other, Neuroi interception reports.

He started drawing dots where the enemy craft had been detected, and lines to indicate their approximate flight paths.  
Red for Neuroi, blue for UFOs.

Bradford peered at the map from the other side of the table, growing increasingly crisscrossed with red and blue.  
"What are you doing, Nakamoto?"

"Something seemed a bit odd with the UFOs, lately. We've been getting too many contacts in that sector to be a coincidence."

"You don't think... intruder operations?"

Shiro finished the map.

While the blue lines curved and danced all over the Channel, the red lines stayed relatively straight.  
They all, however, seemed to come from the same portion of the Channel, when they entered detection range.

With a ruler, Shiro extended the straight red lines.  
Without fail, they seemed to all converge on one point: a small village on the Gallian coast.  
Looking closer, the blue lines all seemed to conveniently pass near that one village on the coast as well...  
"Looks like that's it."

He stood up.  
He'd have to report this to the Council.

* * *

[0712 Hours, May 16, 1944]  
[Dining Room, Headquarters, 501st JFW]

Perinne sat across the table from the Major, as she always did.  
Today, however, the Major seemed troubled by something.

She'd looked that way for the past week or so, and Perinne was growing increasingly worried for her.  
An expression like that didn't sound like it would fit.

...but it did, to Perrine. It made her seem strong, and tough.  
She could imagine the Major speaking to her with that troubled look.  
 _"Oh, Perrine, whenever you go out there my heart aches with worry for-"_

Her Major-induced euphoric daydream was interrupted by the voice of the Major herself.  
"Perrine?"

Perrine stammered out a response, attempting to hide her blush.  
"O-Oh, yes, M-Major?"

The Major looked at her intently, causing Perrine's blush to deepen slightly.  
"Do you have a sister?"

Now Perrine looked at her, confused and more than a bit jealous.  
"I-I do, but.. why would you be interested in her? She's rude, aggressive, a jerk..."

Several chairs down, Shirley and Lucchini broke out into open laughter.  
She continued her tirade.  
"...disrespectful, foul-mouthed, impulsive, loud-"

The Major stopped her.  
"I understand, Perrine. You do have a sister, though? Do you know where she is now?"

Perrine thought for a moment.  
"She doesn't have a shred of magic in her body, but she joined the army as soon as she could. She didn't have very much respect for our mother, and I think that was a way to spite her. She was very... traditionalist."

She laughed.  
"I think you'll love this story, Major. From what I've heard, she pissed off her old commander so much, she got reassigned to some backwater misfits unit. I think it was the... 116th? 117-"

The Major interrupted her, voice intense and urgent.  
"115th? Experimental Combat Unit? What do you know about it?"

Perrine nodded, puzzled now.  
"Yeah, I think that was the one, and.. well, Blanc and I never talked much, especially after we joined the military.  
"From what I've heard, though, it's like.. like a sinkhole. Commanders send their misfits, the troublemakers, there, and they never have to deal with them again. They just... vanish."

"Okay. Thank you, Perrine."  
With that, the Major got up from the table, and walked away.

With a frantic "W-Wait for me!", Perrine shot up, out of her chair, and raced after her.

* * *

[0712 Hours, May 16, 1944]  
[Operatives' Mess, Avalon Site]

Shiro stood at the front of the Mess Hall, delivering the daily announcements.  
"I have good news for both our ground operatives and our Interceptor pilots.

"Starting today, we're going to begin deployment of the first alien technology derived laser weaponry.  
"From what Research and Engineering tell me, you can expect significant increases in firepower at no reduction in weight.  
"And since it's a laser, aiming should be easier with the new laser weapons systems."

Several cheers erupted at this.

"For the ground teams, we've already manufactured a set of laser weapons that covers all the roles filled by our conventional weapons set.  
"For the Interceptor pilots, Flight Lieutenant Siddiqui has completed testing of the new Laser Cannon weapons system, and from what he reports, it works quite well, " Shiro announced, nodding to the Arabic man.

"Your respective commanding officers and division heads should have further information for you if needed.  
"Okay, that's everything. Continue on."

* * *

[0716 Hours, May 16, 1944]  
[Minna's Office, Headquarters, 501st JFW]

Minna read the mission orders for the second time.

In several days, they would be tasked with providing air cover for reconaissance assets over the Gallian coast, just across the Channel. In Neuroi-controlled territory.

Take off at 2000 hours. Rendezvous with unspecified "allied aircraft" over the Channel at 2030 hours.  
Remain on station over the target for however long it takes, then return.

The rest of the mission seemed odd, though.  
The aircraft they would be rendezvousing with, and the ground assets they would be covering, were unspecified.  
The target seemed to be a random, unimportant, nondescript village far away from any former population centers.

There was something there, she was sure of it. But it seemed out of character for the Neuroi- they had never used small land bases before, just the sprawling Hives that dominated the lands they controlled.  
 _But with the recently changing Neuroi, that too could have gone out the window_ , she supposed.

Oh well.  
Orders were orders, after all.

She got up, and stepped outside to announce the day's plans.

* * *

 **End Chapter 4.**

* * *

Supplementary Information: 115th X-COM, Personnel Recruitment Records

* * *

[Institute of Biological Research - Neue Karlsland]  
[Summary of Ethics Board Inquiry: Doctor M. Vahlen]  
[Translated from Karlslander]  
[March 1942]

This board finds Doctor Moira Vahlen in violation of the IBR's Code of Ethics in regards to the series of experiments performed from December 28, 1941 to March 10, 1942 regarding the discovery, detection, extraction, and modification of compounds henceforth referred to as DNA.

While the data and discoveries obtained are both new and scientifically valid, the Board finds the processes used to be unnecessarily cruel and unethical. In particular, the "hybrid rabbit" specimens created using the aforementioned processes have been demonstrated to be in detectable pain and suffering in the simple act of living.

It is thus the recommendation of this Board that Doctor M. Vahlen be therefore suspended from all further research at the IBR, and a record of her ethical transgressions be sent to all of her future employers.

* * *

[Weapons Engineering Division, Liberion Department of Defense]  
[Notice of Termination: Doctor Raymond Shen]  
[May 1942]

This notice is to inform you of your impending termination.

Remarks follow:

Shen, while you and I have worked together for so long, I think it's time we parted ways.  
The higher-ups say that the Division needs some newer blood, and I'm inclined to agree with them.  
With the war going on, we can't afford to waste resources on dead-ends and underutilized personnel.  
You've been a valuable asset to us in the past, and I have no doubt that you can find work in civillian or other military sectors.

I'm sorry it ended this way.

* * *

[Neue Karlsland Technisch Ministerium]  
[Staff Report: Ursula Hartmann]  
[Translated from Karlslander]  
Written by: Project Head, Jet Striker Project  
[January 1944]

I will be blunt, sir. Hartmann needs to be ejected from the team.  
While she's certainly a brilliant engineer and scientist, she tends to leave out or forget certain things in her work.  
Already this has led to several incidents and near-disasters, including several near-fatalities.

Based upon this, I would say that Ursula's the weakest member on the team; thus, she needs to be removed.  
I've even got a good alternative posting: the new '115th Experimental Combat Unit' that the higher ups have been pushing us about.  
The guy who's been asking around seems kind of desperate, so it'll be a good thing for both of us; he gets a new staff member, and  
we get a problem out of our hair.

* * *

[Allied Command in the Atlantic]  
[Personnel Profile: W. Cmdr. Joan Bradford]  
[Unit: 508th Joint Fighter Wing]  
[December 1942]

Her magic appears to be dissipating with age, and while she's good at commanding, she won't be able to fly with the rest of her wing for much longer. I thereby recommend that she be relieved of active duty and transferred out of the 508th JFW. I also propose that Squadron Leader Thach and Flight Lieutenant Mie be promited to Wing Commander and Squadron Leader, respectively.

I can make no recommendations as to where Wing Commander Bradford should be transferred.

* * *

[Allied Command in Suomus]  
[Psychological Report: Maj. Shiro Nakamoto]  
[Unit: Delta Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade]  
[December 28, 1942]

[FILE CLASSIFIED]  
[FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, SEE FILE: SAS Brigade, Delta Detachment - 22/12/1942 - "Operation: Devil's Moon"]


	5. Trial by Fire

**Chapter 5:** Trial by Fire

* * *

[May 17, 1944]  
[On the Gallian Coast]

The village was devoid of human life, had been since 1942.  
Since then, it had been otherwise repurposed- deep underground, a large cavern had been dug out, alien machinery and crew working tirelessly within its depths.

A scout UFO glided in over the empty village, two medium-scale Neuroi accompanying it.  
The UFO dived down, into the coastal waters, leaving its escorts behind.

A short while later, another UFO rose from the depths- an Abductor.

On a small boat about half a mile away, a data analyst from XCOM Strategic Planning tracked the UFO as it flew East.

"Central, this is Sitting Duck. Outbound contact, probable Abductor class, heading due east."

"Roger, Duck. Big Sky is tracking."

* * *

[Buturlinovka Airbase, Orussia]

Orussian Chief of Aviation Alexandra Novikov stepped off a transport.  
The new airbase she was visiting was something of an experiment, for the Orussian Air Force.

This new airbase was designed for use specifically by Witch Units, trading the denser but uncomfortable living spaces in traditional bases for more expansive and comfortable Witches' Quarters. The hangar had been stripped down and shortened, and had been split into two height levels for easy access to Striker Units. They had even installed a hot springs.

By all measures, it was a success- Neuroi air operations had significantly decreased in the area, and the base garrison even seemed to be pushing back the black tides.  
Plans were already in place to build more Witch Bases along similar lines, both in Orussia and in Europa.

Sure, she'd face opposition from the normal fighter pilots, but her view, and the general public's, was that since they weren't the ones winning the war, they couldn't complain.

The UFO serenely flew through Orussian airspace at 40 thousand feet.  
It had very little to fear; the humans down below had essentially nothing that could hope to shoot it down.

From the forward airbase on the Gallian coast, it had continued through much of Europa, and over through the Ural Mountains.  
Several Neuroi had been offered to escort it, but it declined for reasons of stealth.

Eventually, it approached its target: a new Orussian airbase- their air wings in this area had been disrupting Neuroi operations in the area fairly successfully.

This particular UFO was what the humans had dubbed an "Abductor", though the term was something of a misnomer.  
It could be used for all sorts of ground operations, not just abductions.  
This particular operation was an all-out ground assault, and as such the UFO carried a few more ground troops than was normal.

* * *

Several thousand feet below and quite a ways behind it, a Skyranger followed.  
The members of Strike-Four, inside, were somewhat jittery.  
They'd been handling the small stuff, scout UFO recoveries, with ease and very little trouble.

Now, they were being tasked with a slightly more intense mission, an anti-abduction operation.  
They were confident, though, that they could handle it; they'd been handling the Scout UFO recoveries fairly well, after all, and some of them were even getting slightly bored.

Big Sky called out over the intercom:  
"Strike-Four, we are approaching the landing zone. Get ready."

* * *

At 1402 local time, the Skyranger touched down.

The members of Strike-Four walked out into the Orussian summer.  
The airbase seemed perfectly normal, from the outside.

The sun shined down on the strike team, the air was pleasantly warm but not too hot, and the grass was a deep, vibrant green.

The only thing, Yoshika noticed, that was disconcerting was the complete silence.  
The only thing she could hear was the high-pitched whine of Big Sky's engines.

She looked forward and around, taking in the general outline of the building ahead of her...

Big Sky had set them down by the base storeroom, a large, rectangular, warehouse-like room built in the base's south-west corner. This area was one of the three entry points to the base- the others being the front entrance, used by the base personnel, and the hangar, both on the direct opposite side of the base.

The entrances here were two large sliding metal doors, meant for use by delivery trucks.

Saya was looking around the outside of the base- the outer walls of the storehouse were barren, the controls for the doors obviously inside.

Yoshika watched her step forward, sticking a small block of explosive to the rightmost door, towards the rest of the base, about at chest level.

In the meanwhile, Yoshika and Zielinski hastily dragged two concrete dividers, along with a few sandbags, in front of the same door, forming a sort of makeshift cover. Ustinov and Frost joined them behind their cover, training a SAW and a rocket launcher at the door, respectively.

Saya took position beside the door, detonator primed and at the ready. Opposite her stood Rahmanov, scatter laser clutched tightly in his hands.

With the push of a button, Saya detonated the plastique explosives on the entranceway, and they stormed the base.

Rahmanov bravely took point for the team, running in through the smoke, aim dancing wildly from left to right.

He stopped amidst a pile of destroyed wooden crates and miscellaneous repair materials.  
The storeroom remained still and silent.

* * *

The team carefully stepped through the long storeroom, peering through large crates and boxes.  
Every now and then, they came across evidence of a battle; crashed forklifts, a blood-spattered corpse there, a burnt and destroyed crate there.

The power had gone out- and since the storeroom didn't have windows, the team was forced to rely on their gun-mounted flashlights for vision.

Yoshika made sure to watch her step carefully, skirting around or stepping over dead bodies.  
She couldn't stop the blood from getting on her shoes, but she wanted to avoid stepping _on_ a corpse, especially one as bloody as that particular on-

It twitched.

Yoshika jumped, landing on her rear as she frantically tried to scramble away from it.  
The corpse(?) twitched again, chest vibrating erratically as it groaned and heaved.

Yoshika, realizing the situation, rushed _towards_ it and quickly unpacked her medical kit.

The wounded man seemed to have taken severe injuries from plasma fire; a small seam had been opened up in the man's chest. Part of a rib had also become lodged in his right lung, and there were probably a multitude of injuries under his uniform or on his back that Yoshika couldn't see.  
A quick look through with her magic confirmed her suspicions- a multitude of cuts and bruises along the arms and legs, as well as a relatively light plasma wound to the back.

She quickly and carefully pulled out the piece of rib in the man's lung before getting to work with her healing.

Some consultation with Avalon Site's doctors, as well as some work and experimentation in the medbay had allowed her to grasp the possibilities and limitations of her healing ability; her control, it seemed, primarily existed within the realm of the body itself, allowing her control over the body's healing and growing processes, as well as limited telekinesis inside body cavities.

She first sent a powerful pulse of magic through the man's body, regrowing the lower layers of the thoracic wall, telekinetically forcing the air out of the pleural spaces while she was at it.  
Quickly retracting her magic to avoid exhausting herself, she next sent a low-intensity stream that gradually closed off the lung puncture, as well some of the more serious cuts.

The man coughed, hacked, and opened his eyes.  
He began to speak in slurred and sputtering Orussian.

Yoshika stepped aside to let Ustinov kneel in front of the wounded man.  
Ustinov began to speak in quiet, urgent Orussian- asking questions, if the mere tone of his voice was anything to go by.

Eventually, the man's eyes closed, and he fell unconscious, breathing lightly.  
They brought him back to Big Sky.

* * *

The team all kneeled, facing Ustinov, who briefed the team on what he'd heard from the wounded survivor.  
"He told me that, about an ten or so minutes ago, they picked up a large craft coming in fast on radar. The Witches didn't even have time to scramble before the craft started dropping its payload- the invaders, I think. He says that most of the base personnel should be in the hangar, but that a couple of the Witches had to run down to the base armory to get more ammunition."

Saya stood, and looked towards the storeroom's exit into the rest of the base.  
"Alright then. Let's get to that hangar!"

* * *

They exited the storeroom, and entered a large ring hallway, that connected most of the base's rooms together.  
The hallway was hardly better than the storeroom, in terms of lighting- the hallways had few windows, leaving only the occasional hole in the ceiling to provide illumination.

They crept to the north, taking the quickest route to the hangar.  
The corridor branched to the left twice further ahead, into both ends of the residential wing, which was itself a loop hallway.

The team turned into the residential wings, with Yoshika, Ustinov, and Frost staying by the shorter hallway's entrance.  
Many of the doors had been thrown open hastily, and the Witches' personal effects littered the corridors.

Saya turned to a particular door, conspicuously closed.  
She leaned in, pressing her ear against the door.  
She could hear something inside; soft, scratchy, shuffling footsteps- Sectoids, probably.

She motioned for the team to form up on the door; as they did, she looked to Zielinski across from her, on the other side of the door.  
She made two banging motions towards the door, followed by a fist-pump: _breach and clear_.

Zielinski steadied his weapon as Saya grabbed the doorknob.  
She twisted the knob, pushed the door open, and Zielinski opened fire on the two visible Sectoids in the room.  
Rahmanov was the first to enter the room after they opened it, shotgunning a third Sectoid in the corner of the room.

Yoshika and Ustinov noticed something moving behind Sasaki and Frost's shoulders: another Sectoid coming around a corner, presumably alerted by the gunshots.

Yoshika took aim, and fired a short blast of laser light at its large head.  
She missed.  
It was preparing to scramble back into cover when Ustinov fired a longer barrage of lasers at the thing's retreating back.  
He missed as well.  
It was almost around the corner when a short, precise burst from Frost capped it in the head.

Confident that the room was clear, the operatives continued down the corridor.

* * *

Two corners and a couple of empty rooms later, they came to the opposite end of the residential wing.  
Under normal circumstances, the junction here should have connected the Witches' quarters with the northwest corner of the central ring, which led onward to the hangar entrance.

As Saya looked at the rubble that blocked her path, she reminded herself that these were certainly not normal circumstances.

"Okay, looks like we're going to have to backtrack, here. Follow me!"

They backtracked to the entrance of the storeroom they'd entered from, on the other end of the hallway.  
Taking a left, they went eastward, towards the other side of the central ring hall.

* * *

As they came to the end of the connecting corridor, Strike-Four began to hear the sounds of plasma and gunfire again.  
The door ahead of them led to the armory; if the man from earlier was right, then some of the base personnel were probably trapped inside when the alien strike force arrived.

Saya peered through the open door.

A trio of Witches and about 5 members of the maintenance staff had taken cover behind a set of overturned metal tables, and were trying to beat back a pod of 4 Thin Men, who had taken cover behind a set of tall, heavy gun racks.

* * *

Technician Valentin Petrov tried to keep his cool.  
But the fact of the matter is, they were completely, and absolutely, _fucked_.

Their pistols and carbines didn't seem to be doing anything to the monsters at their doorstep.  
The green energy shit the enemies were using, on the other hand, were very effective, terrifyingly so.

Petrov had seen a man try to run from the alien monsters- he'd had his head blown off with just a few shots.  
Only blind luck (and Petrov's title as his school's track champion) had saved him then.

Unfortunately for him, he had nowhere to run.

He saw one of the things ahead, behind the gun racks- they looked somewhat like a human; like a Westerner, almost.  
But some things were off.  
If he dared stick his head up for more than a few seconds and looked closely, he could see eyes that were too slitlike to be human- not to mention the bumps and patches all over its skin that looked vaguely like scales.  
It was also too thin, and too tall at the same time, a like a narrow tube with a head.  
And the way they moved... it was too smooth, too flexible. They seemed to slither more than walk.

 _Like a snake_ , he reflected. _Deadly and quick._

One of the snake-man-things crouched down just outside of its cover, arm stretching, unrolling like a piece of leather, or a whip.  
As it took aim, Petrov tried to fire at it, dissuade it.

But Petrov's shots hit nothing, and the alien kept its cool.  
It fired at one of the Witches: Zukhova.  
(he'd always meant to ask her out someday, even if he knew that he'd get laughed at like most Witches' suitors)

With a flash of magic, Zukhova raised a shield that was bigger than any of them had ever seen before.  
The green shot flew towards her, and broke through her shield, passing through it like it wasn't even there.

The Witch took the shot to the chest, just below and to the left of the collarbone.  
She fell to the ground, blood spurting from the wound in her chest; she did not move.

He could see the other two Witches past her, Koroleva roaring and redoubling her fire, while young Volkova just froze up, the gun in her hands shaking.

Petrov's hands were shaking, too, causing him to fumble a reload.  
Although there was a lot of enmity between them and the "normals", the Witches were the hope-bringers, the ones who could fight back.  
If the Witches fell as easily as that against this foe, who could stop them?

He looked up, past the tables they used as cover, and he saw a bright, glowing tube bounce in front of the alien monsters.  
It exploded in a bright flash, and the world went white.

For a few seconds, anyway.  
His eyes recovered quickly, and he could see the aliens stumbling around, apparently still blind.

From the shadows, a laser sprang out, and speared one through the chest. It fell in a large cloud of thick green gas.  
The others were killed just as quickly, laser shots from ahead felling the aliens.

Ahead, a human soldier stepped out of the darkness, and others followed her.  
She held up her hand, a universal request to hold fire.

Her gun was sleek, painted entirely black save for a strip of red along its length; it reminded Petrov of the Neuroi.  
He raised his gun again, warily.

He heard someone behind him crying- Volkova.  
"Emilia... Emilia!"

Someone in a white uniform rushed past him and kneeled next to the wounded Zukhova.  
He saw another bright flash around the newcomer and Zukhova- magic, probably.

* * *

Emilia Zukhova's eyes flickered open, and she looked up into the face of an angel.  
Though her vision was blurred and dark, she could see the face of a young girl above her, framed by a seraphic glow.  
She reached up to her, and weakly, she called out to it.  
"are you... here to... take me away...?"

* * *

Desperately, Yoshika Miyafuji tried to talk to her.  
"No! I'm not.. you're not going to die! You're not! Stay with me!"

The Witch's soft hand cupped her face.  
Yoshika looked down, and saw a smile on her face.  
Her voice was getting fainter by the second.

"...take...me...away..."

Yoshika grabbed her hand, forcing more and more magical energy into her body.  
It was taking all she could to stop the patient's heart and temporarily stem most of the bleeding- she couldn't regrow and reattach all of the severed arteries at the same time!

The hand in Yoshika's slackened, and the Witch stilled, eyes wide open.  
Yoshika could feel the other body slip away, the brain, muscles, and other internal organs shutting down.  
She fought, desperately, trying to save as much of the dying Witch as she could.

Eventually, however, her body went completely silent, and Yoshika was left, shocked, trying to force magic into a body that would no longer respond.  
It felt cold.

A hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away.  
Someone ran over to the dead Witch's body, collapsed to the floor, and started sobbing, wildly.

* * *

Yoshika felt sad, angry, disgusted, cold, warm, and so many other things at once.

She wanted to vomit.

She needed to vomit.

Wrenching herself away from Sasaki, she ran into the hallway, just past Zielinski, who was watching the hallway.  
She ran a few steps into the hallway, before collapsing to her hands and knees and spilling everything she'd eaten onto the floor.

She sat up, still kneeling, and found Sasaki pulling her upright and twisting her around.  
Yoshika found herself crying into Sasaki's combat vest, out of sympathy for the poor girls, out of anger and frustration and disgust with herself, and simply because of everything else she felt.

After a bit, Sasaki stopped her.  
Yoshika looked up, tears still running down her face.

"Yoshika, listen to me. I know that you're sad, but we have to keep going. More lives depend on us than them."

Yoshika wanted to protest, wanted to yell at Saya about how could she be so cruel and cold, how could she dare understand her, she wasn't just sad...

...but she swallowed her objections and nodded to the affirmative.  
She stopped herself from crying, managing to reduce it to violent shivers; those, too, stopped after a few second's pause.

She still felt all of those emotions inside, to say the least.  
But she held it in, if only barely.

* * *

Sasaki and Miyafuji were in the hallway, dealing with the latter's stress reaction.  
Zielinski was checking the nearby area in the hallway for threats.

Thus, it fell to Corporal Frost to deal with the situation with the rescuees.  
"Big Sky, we have about three- negative, two Witches and five maintenance staff ready for evac, we're sending them your way now."

Ustinov and Rahmanov were already talking with the other Orussians.  
Frost turned to them.  
"You two. Get these people to Big Sky for evac. Keep 'em safe, the X-Rays could have moved anywhere."

"Yes sir!"  
With twin affirmations, they stepped out of the room, the rescued personnel following behind them.

* * *

After a minute or two, Rahmanov and Ustinov returned sans anyone else.  
Miyafuji had also calmed down, meaning that the team was free to continue.

They moved down the hallway, watching out for any other hostiles.

Eventually, they reached the hangar entrance, a set of metal push-bar double-doors.

They quickly breached the doors, hearing the sounds of a pitched firefight from within.

Inside, they found four green, well-armored aliens trading plasma fire with what seemed to be most of the remaining personnel on base.

* * *

The defenders had formed a sort of impromptu barricade line on a raised platform, behind the hangar's Striker launch units, towards the back end of the hangar.  
The attackers, large, muscular aliens whose heads looked like mutant Floater heads, had taken cover behind some large crates strewn about the hangar floor.

The battle seemed to have reached a sort of stalemate, with both sides trading fire without actually hitting anything.  
The Witches, outside of their Striker Units, were out of their element, unable to use much of their magic beyond their inherent abilities. Without the aid of magical strength, they were forced to rely on unfamiliar personal weaponry- pistols, carbines, and the occasional rifle, The maintenance crew were hardly better. Whatever shots did hit more often than not glanced off the thick green armor of the new species of alien.  
The aliens themselves, however, had to contend with having the low ground against enemies in tall, hard cover.

* * *

Both sides of the firefight looked to be unaware of Strike-Four's presence. They used this to their advantage, maneuvering between and behind large crates, racks, tables, and other pieces of concealment.

Strike-Four eventually found the best positions they could- Rahmanov and Zielinski were the closest to the alien force, with Sasaki and Miyafuji at the flanks; Frost and Ustinov were positioned towards the center of Strike-Four's position.  
They were almost in position- just a few more seconds of prep time and they would open fire.

* * *

Then the ceiling exploded, and down on beams of light came more aliens.  
A pod of Floaters and another of Sectoids and Drones crashed down amongst the green-armored aliens.

The Sectoids and Drones joined the green aliens in firing upon the base garrison- but the Floaters had come down looking towards _Strike-Four_.

Strike-Four suddenly found itself under heavy fire from Floaters, and the combatants in the other firefight were starting to notice them, as well.

They went loud.

* * *

Sasaki tossed her last flashbang at the green aliens, hoping to relieve the garrison some, and Ustinov pitched in with suppressive laser fire.

Zielinski lit the aliens up with sustained fire from his Heavy Laser Rifle, terminating two Sectoids with quick bursts.

Yoshika, keeping Overwatch for the squad, looked up and noticed a Floater barreling for Strike-Four's defensive line.  
Rapidly reacting, she fired at it with her Laser Carbine, hitting and wounding it; she capitalized on how it recoiled from the pain and shot it again, this time piercing the thick metal thruster pack it wore. It spiraled to the ground and exploded.

Another Floater attempted to charge the defensive line, but was quickly stopped by Scatter Laser fire from Strike-Four's close combat specialist, Rahmanov.

With a grunt, Frost took hold of the launcher on his shoulder, and unlocked the firing tube, loading a shredder rocket that was in his backpack.  
Peering through the side-mounted sights, he aimed at the rough center of the group of green aliens and Drones ahead.  
After taking a few moments to steady his aim, he fired.

The rocket was relatively on-target, and Frost could see the green aliens try to dive to the ground to avoid the rocket.  
The explosion sent them flying in all directions- though they quickly got back up.

* * *

One of them, obviously wounded, got up, beat its hands against its chest like a big green gorilla, and charged Frost.  
It pulled something free from inside its armor, and threw a blinking device at Frost-  
 _Shit!_

He got up just as the device hit the ground.  
He was running when it exploded.

The force of the explosion sent him head over heels, tumbling across the hangar floor.  
Miraculously, when he came to rest, he found himself behind cover.  
His vision was wobbly and his head was ringing like a bell, but at least he was behind cover.

He turned around, and saw a Floater behind him, plasma carbine aimed at chest level.

It flashed green, and he saw nothing more.

* * *

Yoshika watched on as the Floater moved on to its next target, like a tiger hunting for new prey.

The world around her slowed, and, the Floater turned to her.  
She got a good look at it- it seemed to be slightly bigger, bulkier than the others it came with, and she could see what looked like red war-paint along its face and parts of its rocket pack as well.

As it aimed its gun at her, she also noted that it too was larger than normal, the green glow along its barrel brighter.

* * *

It fired, and a lot of things happened at once.

Yoshika raised a shield and tried to duck.

Something collided with her side, forcing her downwards-  
The plasma shot hit the shield, pressing up against it, pushing, pushing, _burning_ -  
She heard someone cry out her name.  
She felt her magic give way completely, remnants of magical energy flying apart like shards of glass-  
A bright hiss, a thud, someone hitting the floor-

Whirling around, she saw it was Saya; she was breathing erratically, chest rising and falling with an obviously labored and painful rhythm.  
All at once, the bottled up emotions came back, sadness and disgust, coldness and anger rushing to her brain.  
The last thing to hit her was frustration.

Why did people keep dying around her?  
Why did the people she loved, who protected her, keep getting hurt?  
Why were the aliens so cruel? Were they out to get her?  
Why couldn't she do anything?

Why did they think they had the right to just do that, to take all she loved in blinding flashes of green?!  
They thought- those monsters!  
How dare they! They killed her mom, they killed her grandma, they tried to kill Saya-

Raw hate filled her, an experience that was entirely new to her.  
...but she didn't mind it, for this moment.

 _They don't deserve to live! They- they all need to die!  
I need to kill them, I need to kill them all!_

She tightened her grip on her carbine, knuckles turning white.  
She screamed, her high-pitched cry filling the hangar.

And Yoshika Miyafuji went berserk.

* * *

Intense, searing anger, vision tinted red-  
She fired, once, twice, three times, each shot hitting its mark.  
Something exploded.

She moved on, catching sight of something else moving, another grey and orange and dark pink-ish blob of alien.  
She fired on it, too, laser shots lancing out and punching neat holes in its armor, weak spots for Yoshika's carbine to exploit, like a wolf latched onto its prey-

She was ready for anything now, ready for things like the green and large and _alien_ -thing gunning for her.  
It tried to pull something from its armor, a glowing, beeping tube; a grenade, if she remembered correctly.  
She fired first, quickly sending three laser beams into its center of mass.

And one of the other aliens fired, not at her, but at someone else.  
In her blind rage, she hadn't noticed it, hadn't seen it take careful aim and fire.

Zielinski tried to dodge and was met with complete failure, the plasma beam taking off his head as he dived for the ground.

The sight of blood, and the abruptly cut off screams from the dead man hit Yoshika's eyes and ears with the force of a freight train.  
Yoshika regained her wits.

 _W-What was I doing?!_  
She- she needed to be saving people, not- not doing what she was doing, shooting aliens like that with that smile on her face like that and-

A wave of revulsion hit her. She was feeling...  
 _Hate... hate?!_

That- that wasn't her! It couldn't have been her!  
It couldn't- it couldn't- it couldn't-

The shriek of plasma whizzing over her head brought her back to reality.

She, Ustinov, and Rahmanov were the only ones left standing now amongst Strike-Four.  
One alien was left, its green hulking figure standing defiant amidst laser fire.

Ustinov and Rahmanov mopped it up with a combination of suppressive fire and close-quarters shotgunning.  
The scatter laser dispatched the last remaining alien with ease.

With that, the hangar was silent.  
The base garrison looked upon the three standing members of Strike-Four in awe.  
It had been less than three minutes since they even realized they were here.

* * *

Yoshika immediately went about triaging the wounded.

Frost was gone, not responding to her magic at all. She swallowed down _something_ as she moved on; she wasn't sure what it was at this point.

Saya, thank the _kami_ above, was alive- barely.

She forced all her magic into her, blue glow filling the hangar.  
Within moments, she began to feel exhausted. She pressed on regardless.

A few seconds later, she blacked out.

* * *

And at 1535 hours local time, Strike-Four set off for home, with one wounded and two dead operatives.

* * *

[Mission Summary: Operation "Enduring Sword"]

Alien Combatants Killed:  
* 3x Drone  
* 4x Floater  
* 5x Sectoid  
* 4x Thin Man  
* 4x Newly Identified Alien Species, Designation: "Muton"

Alien Combatants Captured:  
* None

Alien Artifacts Recovered:  
* Alien Weapons Fragments  
* Alien Alloy (Minimal)  
* Unidentified Substance M3-D (Minimal)

Miscellaneous:  
* Base Personnel Survivors: 16 (5 Witches, 8 Base Staff Members, 3x Base Visitor)  
* Base Personnel KIA: 7 Witches, 18 Base Staff Members

Operatives Status:  
* Lt-2 Saya Sasaki - Critically Wounded (20 Days)  
* CPL Al Frost - KIA  
* CPL Piotr Zielinski - KIA  
* LCPL Yoshika Miyafuji - Fatigued (4 Days); Promoted to CPL  
* LCPL Erik Ustinov - Fatigued (4 Days)  
* LCPL Namdar Rahmanov - Fatigued (3 Days)

Result:  
The alien ground assault on the Witch Airbase was stopped with casualties.  
Chief of Aviation Alexandra Novikov sends her deepest thanks for saving her.

* * *

[1625 Hours, May 17, 1944]  
[Skyranger Hangar, Avalon Site]

Shiro stood at the edge of the Skyranger landing pad, awaiting the returning Strike Team, as usual.

Blanc Clostermann and Petra Lorenz joined him soon after, the three of them waiting on the railing.  
Small gatherings by the landing pad were fairly frequent- almost everyone had someone to come back to.

Lorenz paced around the landing pad, the Scout anxious for her friend's return.  
"Geez, where is Big Sky? They were supposed to be here three minutes ago!"

Blanc looked at her and spoke quietly, her face seeming somewhat bored.  
"It's flight. You can't expect pilots to be precisely on time."

Shiro stared at the empty pad for a few moments, then turned around, looking to the door to the rest of the base.  
Ticking off the moments in his head, he waited.

The doors burst open, and a swarm of white-uniformed medical personnel calmly strolled out, three stretchers at the ready.  
 _Right on time._

Shiro grimaced.  
Three stretchers for six members- not a good sign.

The Skyranger flew in slowly, turning around in midair and landing, as always, with the exit ramp to the base.  
The paramedics streamed in, carefully extracting their charges.

The first to come out was a light blue XCOM bodybag, with the Liberion flag and the "explosion" logo of the Rocketeers on it; Shiro knew that Corporal Al Frost lay inside.

Another stretcher carried out another bodybag, this one with the Polish flag and the helmeted skull logo of the Infantry class- again, Shiro knew that Piotr Zielinski lay inside.

The next and last to come out was a heavily intubated Saya Sasaki- a cloud of medics surrounded her as they wheeled her into Intensive Care, with Blanc and Petra following. Shiro noticed one conspicuous absence: Yoshika Miyafuji.

The remaining three members of Strike-Four exited on their own two feet, the Orussian duo waving the medics off, and Yoshika bolting away from them when they approached her.

Shiro ran after her, away from the medical wards and into the rest of Avalon Site.

* * *

[1630 Hours]  
[Storeroom, Avalon Site]

Yoshika was curled up between two crates in one of Avalon Site's storerooms.

She felt tense. Her heart was still racing. She couldn't breathe.  
Her hands still shook faintly, even now, and they felt cold.

The world didn't seem real.  
 _What... what just happened?_

She looked at her hands, still in her white XCOM combat uniform.  
There was blood on them, red and thick.

She could still hear them.

Screams of pain, crying, roars of anger and frustration and hate that made her sick to her stomach-  
Yoshika heaved. Nothing came up. She'd vomited her last a while ago, on her way here.

She remembered red, just a red tint to the world that filled her and disgusted her and no no no NO she did not want to think about this-

Someone called out to her, an echoing, faint voice.  
 _take me away..._

She looked up. She saw a Witch's face, eyes wide, wide open and untouched by the blood that covered the rest of her body.  
A hand reached out to grab her own- white and pale and covered in burns and blood.

As she watched, the face morphed, melting and shifting like wax, or sand- first it was Frost, then it was Zielinski.  
Then it was Saya.  
Dark brown eyes peered into her own, and her brows were creased into a frown.

She was saying something.  
 _Useless. Weak. Spineless. Coward._

She curled up tighter.  
 _No, stop..._

 _Murderer. Butcher._

 _I didn't mean to!_

She blinked again.  
Now she saw her father. He said something, as well.  
 _Disappointment._

 _No, please no! I'm sorry daddy, I didn't mean to-_

She shut her eyes tight. She didn't want to see, didn't want to face them.  
They grabbed her hand.

"Miyafuji."

 _It wasn't my fault!_

"Miyafuji!"

"IT WASN'T MY FAULT!"

She opened her eyes, and the world came back into sharp focus.  
The hand disappeared.

She looked up, and found Commander Nakamoto.

"Miyafuji? You okay?"

She didn't respond, not quite sure he was real.

He sat down on the other end of the aisle, against another crate.  
"Do you want to talk?"

She nodded, tried to open her mouth- and found that she couldn't find her voice.

Shiro leaned back against the wall, and remained silent.

They stayed there, in the silence of the dark storeroom, for about fifteen minutes.

Yoshika murmured, quietly.  
"I didn't mean to do it..."

Shiro blinked, eyebrows raised quizzically.  
"Didn't mean to do what?"

"When Saya got hit I... I...  
"I don't know what happened... it was like everything was red..."

Shiro filled in the blank for her.  
"You went berserk?"

Yoshika nodded, and kept her head bowed, not able to look up at him.  
"I.. I felt _angry_. They had hurt Saya, my mom, grandma, and so many other people. And I hated them, hated them so much that I just wanted them to all die right then and there..."

When she looked up again, she expected to be met with disgust, or disappointment, or even frustration and anger.

She found none of those things on Shiro's face- instead, she found what seemed to be understanding.  
"That happens, sometimes, to combat operatives in the field. It's just like panicking and freezing up- you can't help it.  
"All you can do is just try to keep it from happening again."

Shiro smiled slightly.  
"You're pretty close to Saya, aren't you? She's lucky, to have a friend so dedicated to her.  
"She probably needs you in the medbay, though. You should go help her."

Yoshika nearly got up, but her prior failures hit her like a sack of bricks first.  
"I... I can't... I couldn't..."

His smile dropped.  
"Hm? Couldn't... save someone?"

Yoshika nodded, keeping her head up this time, though not looking directly at Shiro.  
"There was a witch. She got hit by plasma, and... and I tried to save her, but then... she died."  
She shivered.  
"She felt cold, so cold, and her eyes were wide open, and..."

Shiro looked at her, and took another deep breath.  
"Miyafuji, listen."

"And, no matter what anyone tries to tell you, one thing is always true: you can't save everyone."  
Yoshika started, fists clenched and a retort on her tongue.  
Those words went against what her father said, against everything she believed in!

Shiro's eyes were downcast, staring at the floor.  
"And, oftentimes, the ones closest to us can be the hardest to protect.

"No matter how hard you try, how strong you are, or what powers you have... people will die, eventually.  
"But you have to keep going. Remember that."

With that, he walked out of the storeroom.

Yoshika followed him out a few minutes later, heading down to the medbay.

* * *

[Medbay, Avalon Site]

Avalon Site's head doctor looked over Saya Sasaki, and after consulting his clipboard for a brief moment, delivered his prognosis.  
"Alright. Most of her more severe wounds should be fine, now. Fortunately for her, she got hit on the side.  
"The plasma ate a nasty hole into, well, basically her entire right side. But it didn't hit anything important, though.  
"However. She's going to be out of action for about three weeks though, while we wait for her right leg to heal up."

The Avalon Site medical staff had already pushed everything as far as they could go- even the experimental stuff from Research had been used.  
Most of it had worked, especially with the injuries to her torso, but one fact still remained: her leg still had a lot of healing to do.  
She'd shattered the bone in several places, burnt away lots of skin and muscle, and shattered the knee, among other things.

* * *

[XCOM Project Meetingroom]  
[1740 Hours]

Shiro and Bradford stood in the large, dark room.  
On a raised desk above them sat the spokesperson of the new XCOM Funding Council, face shrouded in the shadow of a light that shined directly behind him.

"Good news, Commanders. The Orussian government has seen the danger of this new threat we face.  
"They have agreed to join, and fully support the XCOM Project, by whatever means you see fit.  
"You will now answer to my Orussian counterparts and I jointly- however, I will remain as the spokesperson for this Council."

The two heads of XCOM nodded to the affirmative.  
The Councilman continued, moving on to a new point of business.  
"The Orussian government has been... quite insistent that I transfer two Witches to your fighter unit."

Bradford started, objections rising.  
"Wait. The casualty rates we've taken from the UFOs has been increasing lately! Throwing valuable Witches into the meatgrinder like that is insane!"

"The Orussian government has also requested that a conventional fighter pilot transfer into the 115th XFW.  
"The Witches, the pilots, and the Orussian government all understand the risks, Wing Commander."

"Remember, this war cannot be won alone."

The Councilman stood to leave.  
"We will be in touch, Commanders."

* * *

 **End Chapter 5.**

* * *

 **A/N:** Augh. I've been busy for the entirety of last week or so. My schedule should be clearing up soon, though, so hooray for that.  
Anyways, this chapter has basically been one that _just wouldn't end_ \- It's one of the first really big extended action scenes I've ever written, so I'm not sure if I got it right.  
I'm also hoping I got the tone right, here. While this isn't Strike Witches levels of happy, it shouldn't come across as too dark (at least, not yet).


	6. Lights in the Sky

**Chapter 6:** Lights in the Sky

* * *

 _[XCOM Research Division, Project Plan Synopsis: Magical Energy]_  
 _02/05/1944_  
 _Written by: Dr. M Vahlen_

We've known of the concept of "magical energy" for, quite literally, millenia. We know what it does quite well.  
But, we don't know _how_ or _why_ it works- a major failing, for the field of science.

However, science and magic historically have not mixed very well, with only a few exceptions, such as Watt and Dr. Miyafuji.

That may change, however, with the proper application of alien technology- we've already highlighted a few devices that we feel could help with the task of measuring magical energy.

Due to the relative lack of Witches among our ranks, this research will not benefit us much. The wider world, fighting the Neuroi, would certainly appreciate any advances we make in this field, though.

I estimate that this project, if approved, will take five to six researchers about two weeks to complete.

I have already selected the team for the project. None of them are on the Beam Laser team, so this should not significantly impact that project's progress.

 _[I'll have to talk to the Council about getting a safe channel for technology releases. In the meantime however, your plan is APPROVED. You might want to talk to Wing Commander Bradford, though I'm sure you've probably already thought of that. - Cmdr. Nakamoto]_

* * *

[May 20, 1944]  
[Research Division, Avalon Site]

Dr. Vahlen busily stepped around a machine, fiddling and poking at its controls, occasionally muttering to herself as she did so.

"Focus exposure percentage...energy drain path resistance..."

The other members of the research team occasionally sent curious glances her way, and to her current subject.

Yoshika leaned back on a fairly comfortable chair. A multitude of wires led from its arm- and head-rests to the machine Vahlen was currently configuring.

The machine was the culmination of eighteen days of work by one of the Research Division's teams: a device that could objectively measure a person's magical strength. Like all of the Division's devices, it relied on alien materials- as it turned out, Elerium could be coaxed into acting as a potent magical focus. The only issue was safety: the element was infamously prone to exploding if not used correctly, so they couldn't use it for propulsion in an actual aircraft or Striker (yet).

A variety of lights on the chair began to brightly glow, and Dr. Vahlen stepped in front of the device's central control panel.

"We are ready to begin. Miyafuji, you will feel something draining your magical energy. Don't try to fight it or help it in any way. Simply relax and let your magic flow through you. This will take about five minutes."

Dr. Vahlen flipped a lever on the console, and Miyafuji could hear a large fan begin to spin behind her. The tips of her fingers began to tingle, feeling almost as if she were healing someone.

 _I really hope this procedure doesn't take too long. I need to get back to the medbay!_

The commander had assigned her there for the past two days, during her mandatory after-mission "rest period".

She wondered if Saya had woken up, yet- she'd been so busy she didn't have time to check.

There was a soft "ding!" sound, and Vahlen looked up, finishing her data collection.

"Okay, Miyafuji. We're done here, you can go."

* * *

[XCOM Council Meetingroom]

The Orussian delegate to the XCOM Project sat down in his seat, at the Council's meeting table.  
The room was dark, cavernous, and slightly chilly.

It had all the airs of an important organization: large, imposing, mysterious.

 _The only thing it is missing_ , Mr. Komarov thought, _is more people._

There was only one other person at the table- the Britannian delegate, Mr. Graham.  
"Welcome, Mr. Komarov. I presume our infrastructure is being extended to your country?"

"Ah, yes, yes. I must thank you for moving to protect Orussia. The personnel I sent should be on their way now, as well."

Getting personnel to transfer had been hell for Komarov- it was hard enough convincing the conventional commanders to spare a fighter pilot; getting _Witches_ was near impossible for him. It was only through pressure from Novikov that he'd gotten anyone at all.

And he was sure that the few he _did_ get were bottom barrel, the "expendable" ones.

Komarov looked around the dark room. At first glance, it _looked_ important, and importance was vital to the up and coming Orussian politician.  
However, now he could practically feel his career dying, here, in the near silence of the room.

He'd taken this post since it seemed like a promising position- a post overseeing a special organization that promised, as Mr. Graham told him, to shape the planet's future.

The fact that there was barely anyone on it made it even more enticing.

It was a golden opportunity, brand new, and Komarov was sure that someone else would be by to take it shortly if he didn't.

Then, after he'd taken the job, he looked at what they'd accomplished, hoping to use it for publicity purposes.  
He'd found very little, and even then Mr. Graham had warned him that details of the Project were not to be publicly released.

Still, though, something about this organization interested him.

Maybe it was how Novikov had, privately, given them such high praise- "saviors" and "turners of the tide", she had called them.

Maybe it was how most of the briefing files they had given him looked more like marker test sheets than actual documents.

Maybe it was the mysterious "infrastructure" they were building right now, in his country.

Mr. Komarov leaned back, and settled into his new job, chasing rumors, ghosts, and maybe something bigger than he could ever imagine.

* * *

[0704 Hours]  
[Britannia]

A small car whizzed through the Britannian countryside, and Flight Officer Vera Barinova in the backseat took in the small country's sights.  
She'd been abruptly transferred from their relatively low-key air squadron to a "small specialist outfit" near the isle's coast.

She hadn't been given any other details about where they were going or why.  
She hadn't even been given much time to say goodbye- the transfer papers had just come in the previous day, and she was on the long roundabout flight to Brittania within hours.

On her left shoulder leaned F/O Ekaterina Kozlova, fast asleep as always- she'd passed out less than an hour into the flight, and had remained leaning against Vera the whole time.

The only other person coming with them was, oddly enough, one of the conventional fighter pilots their squadron was stationed with: F/O Viktor Chernov.

They hadn't talked much, but at her old airbase, the Witches at least got along with everyone else.  
They'd even flown a few successful missions against the Neuroi together (the Witches had always taken center-stage, though).

It was a far cry from the stories she'd heard, from other units: rivalries between Witches and "normals", bitterness over losses- units trying to steal the glory from each other or even trying to get the others killed in battle.

Fortunately, she had seen none of that at her own airbase.

The rumors had gotten weirder in the past few months, though. Now it was all ghost stories, of dead pilots who come to shoot down the living, untrackable spectres and mysterious contacts on the radars late at night- Vera, personally, thought that was silly, but others swore up and down that it was true.

The car was on a relatively straight path, now, and heading into a thick forest- all Vera could see was green.  
Eventually, the forest thinned out, and the car drove into a flat, level clearing.

They briefly stopped at a security checkpoint, and drove into a military base.

* * *

[0738 Hours]  
[Bradford's Office, Avalon Site]

Bradford was filling out the last of the paperwork regarding Flight Officer Laitinen's death.

Things were spiraling downhill, fast, for the Experimental Fighter Wing.

The UFOs' sheer superiority to terrestrial technology was very, very apparent in the air; the UFOs were better armored, better armed, more maneuverable, and could essentially appear anywhere, at any time.

The only way they could even hope to take down UFOs was through a numerical advantage- but even then they still took fairly heavy losses, the average around one out of four, per interception.

How could you survive against an enemy who can tear through your defenses like tissue paper?

They'd started the month with nine available fighter pilots.  
They were down to three, now.

There was a knock at the door.  
"Come in."

An Orussian man walked in. He wore a flight suit with a brown buzzcut, and seemed unimpressed.  
 _Probably the new pilots,_ Bradford realized.

"Oh, you're here. You must be the pilots Orussia was sending us."

The man gave a lazy salute.  
"Flight Officer Viktor Chernov, reporting, ma'am."

Bradford peered around and behind him, flipping through her files as she did so.  
"There were supposed to be three of you, right? Two other witches. Where are they?"

She pulled out a folder, buried under all the other stuff on her desk; the dossiers for Flight Officers Barinova and Kozlova.  
She opened the folder and skimmed through it.  
"Yes, fifteen-year old Barinova and seventeen-year old Kozlova. Did they come with you?"

Two other people walked in then, a tall and purple-haired Witch dragging in a shorter, sleeping, green-haired girl.

Bradford nodded to the purple haired Witch.  
"Ah, Kozlova, there you are."

The Witch seemed rather surprised.  
"Eek! Sorry, sorry! Kozlova kinda fell asleep on the way here and I can't wake her up!"

She shook the green-haired girl's shoulders, sending her hair flying back and forth.  
"Come on, Katya, wake up already! Please!"

Chernov's teeth clenched, and he tensed slightly.  
"Come on, Kozlova. We're in front of our commanding officer. Show some respect."

Green eyes flickered open, and Kozlova gave a friendly wave, before falling asleep again.

Bradford looked at the sleeping Witch before glancing to her purple-haired friend, who now seemed to be staring out the window, at one of the fighter planes outside.  
"Is she going to be a regular issue, Flight Officer...?"

The Witch nearly jumped, startled by the sudden address.  
"Oh, umm! Ver- I mean Barinova, ma'am! And uh, yes. That's going to happen a lot, I think. But I don't think it's her fault! She just... falls asleep like that."

Bradford blinked once, before shrugging in resignation.  
"I suppose we can't do anything about that. Follow me, I'll take you to the hangar."

* * *

[Hangar, Avalon Site]

Flight Lieutenant Siddiqui watched two trucks tow in a new Nimbus interceptor and a Striker Launch Unit.  
"We're getting Witches?"

The hangar maintenance crew wheeled in two new I-54 "Stratus" Striker Units on carts. He saw F/O Macleod look at the Strikers, then walk away, a bit displeased.  
"Shit. I don't want to have to deal with bullshit drama, too, along with the UFOs."

Shiro stood beside him, silently, and looked on.  
"You know better than I do that we cannot afford to reject any pilots, especially now. And besides, we can't just send the new pilots back to Orussia."

Siddiqui shook his head.  
"I know, I know. It's just... bad blood, I think? Many of the pilots were here because they _survived_ flying with Witches."

"Survived?"

"I mean... what usually happens is, a Witch Unit goes out with a fighter pilot wing as escorts. The pilots don't usually come back."

Shiro watched a blob of purple hair race across the tarmac, towards the Strikers, and immediately start bouncing around them, looking at the Strikers from all directions.  
"I get the feeling that will quickly become a non-issue, given who we face."

* * *

Vera took one step into the hangar, and was immediately entranced; she'd darted straight for where her Strikers were.  
They were obviously brand new, shining metallic grey, with an unfamiliar blue pentagon logo on them.

The other three caught up to her soon enough, and Vera had _so_ many questions for her commanding officer!  
"Hey, this seems new! What's up with it? It doesn't look like any Striker I've seen before, and it's got all of these bits and pieces on the backside and can I look inside and what does this hose wire thing here do and-"

Kozlova, now at least awake enough to move on her own, stopped her.  
"Vera, you're doing it again."

Vera ground to a halt in front of Bradford, Chernov, and Kozlova, blushing brightly.  
"Um, sorry! I was just so excited and wanted to know more!"

"In that case, I can brief you three here," Bradford replied.  
"This is the I-54 'Stratus' Striker. It emphasizes maneuverability and speed over efficiency and range."

She pointed to the Hangar, behind her, and the aircraft within.  
"Behind me, you can see I-53 'Nimbus' Interceptors. Both were developed and built by us, in this base.  
"They combine the best parts of the best designs available to us, and we've incorporated a few changes of our own, making it even better.  
"They can outperform pretty much all other aircraft or Striker Units in the Allied air forces, or most Neuroi, for that matter.  
"It's fairly labor intensive to make, but teams of nine take about two to three weeks to repair it at worst."

She turned to all three of them, then pointed to a twisted heap of metal being brought into the Hangar.  
"And the enemy we face completely outclasses it."

Chernov stared at the wrecked Interceptor. He could see holes, round and smooth, that had apparently been bored into the cockpit windshield and parts of the fuselage.  
"What happened to that interceptor? What exactly are we fighting?"

"We fight an enemy completely unlike the Neuroi. I'm sure you've heard the rumors and the stories. Strange radar signatures, lights in the sky, craft that are neither Neuroi or human, I could go on. Sound familiar?"

Vera nodded.  
"Yeah! Wait- they're real?!"

Bradford nodded.  
"Affirmative.  
"That was Flight Officer Laitinen. Five days ago, he went out, with two other pilots, to intercept a Scout-class UFO, one of the smallest kinds. They got caught in a battle inside the clouds, a Witch mistook them for Neuroi, and Laitinen was too busy trying to clear up the difference to notice the plasma fire heading for him."

"And that.. 'plasma fire', you say, " Chernov asked, "it did _that_ to him?"

"Yes. Sometimes, we don't even get that much- just bits and pieces of wreckage from exploded aircraft.  
"Witches, for that matter, don't fare much better. Actually, the one report we have indicates they perform _worse_ , at least when with only other witches."

" _Worse?_ "

"Shields are useless against plasma; it just goes straight through, like a hot knife through butter."

Bradford pointed to the two Witches.  
"How much do you rely on your shields in combat?"

Vera put a finger to her chin for a second, thinking.  
"Well... not too much, actually! I can rapidly shift around in the air with my power... if that makes any sense. Um! I can demonstrate!"

Bradford made a palms-up motion; "Go ahead."

Vera nodded, took a deep breath, and scrunched her eyes, calling forth her magic.

Bradford blinked, and when her eyes opened again, Vera was suddenly five feet to the left.  
"That's, uh, about as far as I can go, unfortunately. But it's really helpful with dodging lasers!"

"I can see that. What can Kozlo- hang on, where did Kozlova go?!"

Vera was startled by this. Katya was leaning on her- wait, did she leave her behind?!  
Wait, no, Katya was still on her shoulder, not snoozing on the asphalt like she thought.

 _Oh, wait._

She moved her shoulder around a bit, shaking Kozlova back into wakefulness.  
As Bradford looked around for the supposedly missing Witch, she noticed something that she hadn't really been paying attention to.

Or rather, someone.

"Oh, Kozlova. Where did you go? The briefing wasn't over yet, flight officer."

Ekaterina blinked once, twice, and chuckled lightly.  
"Sorry... I tend to do..." she yawned, "...tend to do... attention-unnoticing stuff like that. It's my innate ability."

She yawned again.  
"Sorry... commander. I'm just... kinda tired, from the long trip here..."

She fell asleep again, on Vera's shoulder.

"I'm surprised she can fly, the way she is," Chernov remarked.

Vera raised an index finger.  
"Um, actually! I think her magic helps her with that. She hasn't fallen asleep in flight once! But, um, if it's okay with you, Commander, I'd like to follow her around. I don't want her falling asleep in bad places."

"Certainly. I was about to ask you to do so anyways."  
Bradford checked her watch.

"Alright then, we've got about fifteen minutes before we introduce you three to the rest of the pilots. I'll take you to see your new weapons."

* * *

[Engineering, Avalon Site]

The four of them walked into Avalon Site's production line facility.  
Shen and Hartmann were busily talking and inspecting a set of very large weapons laid out on a table in front of them.

Vera, ahead of the group as usual, went to go peer past them at the guns.  
"Whoa, are those Neuroi?!"

Dr. Shen and Ursula turned to her.  
"No. While these weapons are certainly alien in origin, they do not directly use parts of the Neuroi. Instead, we have reverse engineered, and copied, parts of the technology of the _other_ aliens we face," Shen explained.

Ursula gestured to the weapons on the table, and three blueprints pinned to the wall behind them.  
"For these weapons, we've upscaled our existing beam laser designs for ground infantry to use the firing systems from the Laser Cannons we've put on aircraft. The only issue is cooling."

She pointed to a large boxy gun, all black, with a series of thick red stripes running down its "barrel".  
It almost seemed to be as long as she was.

"This is what we started with. We call it the Laser Lance. It's essentially the Laser Cannon firing systems mounted in a Witch-portable package.  
"Unfortunately, since the frame is smaller, we had to downsize the cooling systems, so it can't match the firing speed of the laser cannon. To counterbalance that, we've incorporated some of the advanced optics systems from the Beam Sniper Rifle, so it should be more accurate."

She then pointed to a similar gun that seemed even bulkier, with a set of small bright red tubes running down along the exterior of the barrel.

"We tried to increase the firing rate of the Lance. Unfortunately, after a certain point, the power distribution and laser pumping mechanisms just... failed. Explosively so."

Vera could see Ursula wincing slightly.  
"We realized that we'd have to cut back its firepower to accomodate the faster firing rate. This is the result. We call it the Superheavy Laser Rifle. It fires at about the same rate as the Laser Cannon, but with less energy per shot."

Ursula pointed to another gun, shorter this time, with four large red tubes towards its rear, with a really short barrel capping them off.

"For this one, however, we decided to try going in the other direction: increasing shot power at the expense of firing rate.  
"We tried incorporating two of the laser cannon firing systems into one frame. None of the focusing systems we had could handle the energy load of repeated use, except for the prism from the Scatter Laser, so this weapon has a scattering effect that makes it work like a shotgun. Of course, since the lasing systems generate a lot of heat, a cooling cycle is required after each shot.  
"We're calling it the Superheavy Scatter Laser."

* * *

[Command Center, Avalon Site]

With Bradford out meeting the new pilots, the duty of watching for new UFO contacts was on the Command Center technicians and Shiro.  
He was mentally running through the possibilities at the alien coastal base when a call came in over the radio communications system.

 _"This is XCOM Radar Site 11 calling Central. We're seeing ... four, repeat four, contacts at-"_

Shiro sprang for the microphone.  
"Say again, Site 11?"

No response.  
"Site 11? Come in, Site 11."

He looked to the technicians.  
"Alarms. Now. And get Bradford in here!"

 _"Central, this is Site 12, I can confirm four UFO contacts at angels two-five, bearing oh shit oh SHIT TAKE COV-"_

" _Central, Listening Post confirms, three fighters and one destroyer, bearing about zero-three-seven. We're going passive now."_

One of the technicians called out to him.  
"Sir, RAF Fighter Command is reporting some of the Chain Home stations are going dark as well. They don't know what's going on."

Shiro sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.  
"Great. They found our detection net."

Shiro began speaking into the radio again, "All Sites-"

Bradford walked into the room then.  
Shiro took off his radio headphones and tossed them to her.

"Nakamoto. What's going on?"

"Four UFOs. Three fighters, one destroyer. Last reported position seems to be just over Site 12, altitude twenty-five thousand. They're going after radar stations, both ours and Chain Home."

Bradford did a double take.  
"Four UFOs? Oh, hell."

Bradford grabbed the microphone and switched to the Interceptor radio network, taking a deep breath to calm herself.

"Ahem. Xenonaut Squadron. All interceptors, launch immediately. Contacts at angels two-five over Site 12, bearing..."

* * *

[25,000 feet over Brittania]

The UFO squadron stole through the crisp morning air, a glowing orange stain on the ground below the only trace of XCOM Radar Site 12.

A young boy, in a small town below, looked up suddenly. Something felt wrong. Like something was watching him. He felt scared.  
He looked around, scanning the skies for something. He caught a glimpse of several somethings up and far away. They seemed to be moving.

He saw bright streaks of green and white trail across the sky.

Several miles away, a cluster of plasma explosions engulfed an unfortunate Chain Home radar station, the operators, masts, and huts vaporized by energetic blasts.

The Destroyer UFO continued serenely through the air, and as it did so a multitude of glowing red crystals fell from it.  
As they fell black masses began to coalesce around them, thick shells of alien matter forming.

The fully formed Neuroi stopped their fall, hovered for a moment, and flew off, dividing into two packs.

A smaller group, numbering fifteen Neuroi, flew due north towards London to wreak havoc. The rest, a group of twenty-five, rose and flew north-east towards Maidstone.

* * *

[Hangar, Avalon Site]

The three flyers hurried into the hangar.

Chernov strode towards his plane, its cockpit already open. He practically jumped inside it, the technicians beside it hastily completing their task of attaching a Laser Cannon on its wing. As they cleared his wings, Chernov quickly went over Bradford's summary of his new ride in his head.

Chernov had always prided himself on being adaptable, and from what he'd heard, this craft would test his adaptability.

He started up the craft, and he could feel the engines start to turn.

As he looked over his instrument panel, he remarked that it wasn't that different; sure, most of the dials and indicators he was used to were now somewhat fuzzy displays behind thick glass, but all the information he was used to was still there, at least. He experimentally hit a few buttons, switching the displays between various modes, and committed their functions to memory.

He heard a low humming coming from his left wing, and saw a large rectangular box on his wing, glowing a bright red: the laser cannon.

Ahead of him, the two Witches were taking off, laser armaments in hand.

Chernov would be the last one up.

"This is Xenonaut-Two, taking off now."

* * *

[Over Brittania]

Captain Eriksson and Flight Officer Macleod were the first to get airborne, and within a minute, the rest of the Xenonauts, including the three rookies, had joined them. They immediately turned to the direction of Site 12 and began to fly to the intercept.

Central's voice came over the radio.  
"Xenonauts, attention. This is Central. Form into pairs. Eriksson, you're with Siddiqui. Macleod, you're with Kozlova. Chernov, Barinova. You two are together.  
"Eriksson and Siddiqui will engage the Destroyer craft. Everyone else is to focus on keeping the Fighter craft off of them."

Macleod clenched his teeth as they shifted into their assigned pairings.

When he'd signed up, they'd told him that this would be a plane-only party.  
He didn't have anything in particular against women. In fact, some of the finest people he'd met in his old unit- no, in his life- were female. He'd have gladly stood behind any of them, and so would have his brothers-in-arms!

And they all stood united in their thoughts on Witches: specifically, that those self-centered bitches had another thing coming.

 _Oh, look at me! I've got sparkles and magical bullshit! I'm sooo much more important than all of you fighter pilots!  
_ No matter what they did, it was always the same! They just danced around the field, making the poor conventional pilots take all the heat and do all the hard work, and then they stole all the credit for themselves when the enemies went down.

And then, when the going got tough and they had to bail, guess who had to cover them? That's right, the very same fighter pi-

He knocked the side of his head twice.

 _Okay, I shouldn't be getting myself worked up before a battle. That's just going to get me killed. Especially now._

He forced himself to think more clearly.

 _Okay, okay, maybe there maybe one or two of them that weren't bad.  
_ The Wing Commander was one of them, but he was debating whether or not she counted as a Witch- she _was_ retired after all, without any magic, and since then she'd seen the shit that happened to the fighter pilots. Besides that, she was a damn good commander.

She was about all he could think of for examples, though.

An announcement over the radio brought him out of his thoughts, though, and he brought his focus back to the flight.

"Xenonaut-One tallies four at one o'clock, one mile out, our altitude. Committing."

"Xenonaut Squadron, this is Central. Bandits confirmed hostile, you are cleared to engage."

* * *

They corrected their headings and flew in to make the intercept.  
The UFOs noticed them fairly quickly, and the fighters turned to take them on. The Destroyer immediately picked up speed, trying to fly away from the incoming battle.

Macleod picked out a fighter, and climbed to gain altitude on it.  
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kozlova maintaining their previous altitude, turning to engage the same target.  
 _So she wants to try this alone, huh? Two can play at that game!,_ he thought.

Nearly on top of the UFO now, he entered a steep dive, coming in screaming from the blue.

His sights jerked towards their target, wobbling slightly-  
and a hatch on the UFO's roof opened up, plasma turret tracking him as he came in.

He thumbed the trigger lightly, laser shots ringing out; the UFO dodged, rolling far too fast for something of its size, out of his line of fire.  
It pitched up almost 90 degrees into a quarter-loop, and Macleod cut left as a towering column of plasma hurtled towards him.

He leveled out, the Fighter now above him. To nine o'clock low he could see the two other Orussian pilots- _Chernov and Barinova_ , he remembered- tangling with one of the other Fighters.  
To eleven o'clock he could see Siddiqui and Eriksson pursuing the Destroyer and one of the other Fighters.

He looked to eight o'clock high. Nothing.  
 _Shit, where is it-_

"Six, break right break right!"

He pushed the yoke forward hard and wrenched it right, sending himself on a steep rightward dive.  
Just above him he felt the rumbling of the Fighter UFO, heard its deep warbling hum as it shot past him.

He turned and pulled up again, throttling back the engine as he pulled the UFO into scissors.

* * *

Kozlova gritted her teeth as she slipped around the UFO, stealthily passing above it with the help of her magic.  
Fortunately, Macleod was occupying it at the moment, and she slipped in front of it with a Split-S.

Kozlova and the UFO met head-on just as the UFO was pulling into the weave, and at point-blank range Kozlova's Scatter Laser blast hit it fully.

The wide, shallow laser blast only succeeded in blowing open part of the Fighter's heavy armor plating.

She dived, barely flinging herself under the UFO and diving further, heat from what seemed to be the engines on its underside warming her back.

The UFO rolled inverted, and Kozlova found herself having to dodge for her life as the UFO performed a Split-S of its own and pursued her doggedly.

She rolled, dived, and broke away repeatedly, but no matter what she did, the UFO seemed determined to keep going after her.

MacLeod, on the other hand, was now rather pissed that the UFO was focusing on her and seemed determined to gain its attention.

Kozlova flipped onto her back, and saw the fighter pilot fall in behind her pursuer- but he didn't fire for some reason.  
Instead, he seemed to be cutting the turn she, and the UFO, were taking.  
He turned back towards them as she doubled back, their flightpaths heading for each other.

Almost at the last minute, she pulled up, leaving MacLeod and the UFO facing head-to-head.  
Plasma shots and laser beams criss-crossed in the rapidly vanishing space between them.

MacLeod's lasers impacted against the already-weakened UFO armor and punched straight through the inner wall, ripping a large hole in the hull where Kozlova's scatter lasers had burnt it away.

The craft went down in flames, pitching down and entering a spiral as it impacted hole-first into the earth below.

* * *

Chernov found himself thinking as he frantically weaved through plasma fire.

 _This is not a Neuroi._

He tilted his wings slightly to avoid a shot on his right side.

 _I do not need to hit the core._

He executed a wide roll, trying to skirt the blasts.

 _But there must still be weak points._

Barinova was flying ahead of him, getting up close and personal with the UFO.  
She weaved through the worst of the fire, using her teleportation to dodge anything that got too close.

However, she couldn't hope to fire the Superheavy Laser with any accuracy like this.  
Every time she tried to fire, a burst from the UFO would cut close, forcing her to evade and spoil her shot.

 _She can not keep doing that forever._

An idea hit him.

"Xenonaut-Four, " he radioed to Barinova, "break up and fly above it! Aim to the turret!"

She complied, immediately pulling almost straight upwards. The turret continued to track her as she did so.  
Pushing the throttle as far as it would go, Chernov hit WEP and tried to close with the UFO ahead of him.

"Four, pull back slightly! Allow me to distract him!"

Chernov and Barinova switched places, allowing Vera to steady her shot while Viktor twisted around his flightpath.  
He saw the turret still try to track upwards, and he fired a fusillade of wild, inaccurate shots.  
 _Come on, come on, I am the target here!  
_

The turret immediately snapped to him, and he did a short upward spiral followed by a dive to avoid the fire.  
A shot grazed his canopy, and for a brief moment Viktor felt himself under the heat of a second sun.

He pushed the stick further downward, willing his plane to dive faster.

A second volley of laser fire from him scratched the wide rooftop of the UFO and its sides, his Cannon's spread sending the lasers haphazardly across its surface.  
They punched through most of the top and side armor of the UFO and even formed small holes in the hull, but the craft continued onwards.

Another set of laser shots rang out then, from Barinova.  
They hit the UFO's plasma cannon turret, riddling its inner workings with holes and causing a small explosion of green to erupt on the UFO's roof.  
The turret retracted into the UFO hull, leaving the skies open for the two flyers to move in.

* * *

Now lacking offensive capability, the UFO resorted to making use of its considerable maneuverability.  
It rolled and corkscrewed up and to his right, picking up speed even as Viktor moved to pursue it.

Below it, Vera fired again, trying to hit its underside, but it rolled onto its side, sending the laser shots whizzing by its roof.

Viktor pulled his nose slightly up and to the right of the UFO, just past it in its direction of flight, and fired a short blast.  
The UFO flew downwards to avoid the shot.  
He fired just off its right. It flew left.  
 _I can use this._

Jerking his nose wildly, he fired shots wildly around it, forcing it to roll and evade and coincidentally forcing it to stay in a predictable flight pattern.

The UFO's top hatch opened again, and the plasma cannon came out once more.  
It rotated towards him, and the air filled with plasma again.

As he moved to evade Viktor realized that his suppressive fire forced him to constantly stay on the UFO's tail and weave just as predictably as the UFO.

He held the pattern steady for a few more moments, hoping that Vera-

More lasers lanced through the air, impacting the weak spots of the UFO's armor, where Chernov had hit it earlier, lancing through the UFO hull and into the interior.  
With a loud BANG, the craft fell out of the air, spiraling to a crash landing below. As it fell, Chernov could see the alien crewmembers falling out of the holes they'd made in the craft.

"Bandit downed."

* * *

By now, the Destroyer, the last Fighter, and the two pilots chasing them were quite far from the battle.

Siddiqui tightly rolled beneath the remaining fighter, plasma shots falling like rain around him as he smoothly transitioned from the roll into an upward half-loop.  
He held down the trigger as he did so, walking his laser fire upwards through the UFO in a vertical slash at near point-blank range.

The lasers cut through the UFO's underside and backside, and a series of explosions rocked the UFO as it fell to the ground in pieces.  
Pulling the yoke as close as he could and slowing the craft to make the upwards turn even tighter, he deftly avoided the UFO's debris.

As he rolled upright again, he saw the four other Interceptors in the distance, closing on them.

He keyed his mic.

"Eriksson, we have friendly company moving to regroup with us."

He pulled his fighter into a wide rightward turn and moved to engage the Destroyer.

Eriksson was already engaging it, had been for the entirety of the fight. Siddiqui had moved to pull the fighter off of him, leaving them both in one-on-one aerial duels.  
Siddiqui hadn't minded it- there was just something about lone hunts that excited him, made his heart pound and his nerves tingle. Probably adrenaline.

Now, however, Siddiqui could see that Eriksson and the Destroyer were locked in a stalemate.

Eriksson was good, extremely so- he already had four UFO kills to his name, and was itching to be the first to make ace on UFOs (and live to brag about it, but that part went unsaid).

He'd survived nine UFO engagements thus far, and was putting the skills he'd acquired from those to full use.

But the Destroyer he was facing had two defensive plasma cannons, on both its top and its bottom.  
These cannons not only fired faster but also hit a lot harder (not that there would be any real difference if they got hit), and Eriksson found himself locked down by their combined volume of fire, unable to get a good shot.

Siddiqui climbed up about 300 feet above them and pushed the throttles forward to inch closer.

Eriksson was moving through a barrel roll when a plasma shot flew by the right of his plane.  
He was already rolling his wings to evade it, but in the mess he'd apparently misjudged where the shot was, and brought the tip of his wing down into the path of the incoming plasma bolt.

A third of Eriksson's right wing came off, and he spiraled towards the ground, smoke trailing from his damaged craft.  
After falling 500 feet towards the ground, he managed to wrench himself upright and out of his dive, flying a brief straight course before trying to climb up again.

Eriksson's maneuverability was shot, though, and he backed off and kept his distance as Siddiqui moved in on the UFO's left to continue pursuit.

A brief volley of fire from Siddiqui produced no results, all the shots going wide as the UFO broke left at a nearly ninety-degree angle.  
Siddiqui was already pulling left to follow it when the rest of the squadron arrived.

MacLeod and Kozlova were the first up, meeting the Destroyer directly to its own left, flightpaths perpendicular.  
A brief burst of laser fire from MacLeod's cannon melted away part of the UFO's outer armor, and Kozlova, unseen, fired her Scatter Laser upwards into its thrusters.

They dived away and split as the underside-mounted plasma cannon tracked and fired at them.

The UFO began to dive downwards; Chernov and Barinova, above, followed suit and dived after it, spiraling to avoid the wrath of the top-mounted turret.

Chernov constrained his fire, lightly tapping the fire trigger rhythmically, singular blasts landing hits on the UFO's roof and sides, blasting away more of its armor plating.  
Barinova followed suit, a precise series of beams hitting the UFO plasma turret and shutting it down, at least temporarily.

The craft was smoking now, and falling steadily to the ground. However, it somehow managed to regain flight control just above ground level.

Eriksson, lurking just above the fields below, put as much power as he could into the engine.  
With his airframe shaking around him, the two stricken craft met each other head-on.  
He squeezed the fire trigger as hard as he could, and the Laser Cannon on his wing, still barely attached, complied, sending wild fire into the UFO.

With most of the armor gone from the combined laser fire, the UFO hull gave way easily, the lasers spearing the UFO through and hitting the volatile ground-attack Elerium projectiles in the back.

They all went off at once, and the Destroyer went up in a spectacular explosion that nearly engulfed Eriksson's craft.

* * *

Chernov looked up in his cockpit. Barinova, above him, was waving her weapon around triumphantly.

Central radioed in.  
"Good work out there, Xenonaut Squadron. Listening Post reports that the air is quiet. Status?"

Eriksson, struggling to keep his aircraft pointed up but still climbing regardless, radioed back.  
"Xenonaut-One reporting, " he began.

Chernov could see him looking around, at the rest of the squadron.

"I think... I think we're all alive..."

Central seemed stunned by this news when Eriksson reported in.  
"Say again, One?"

"We're alive! We're all alive!"

Eriksson was positively beaming, and Chernov watched him laugh in his cockpit, puzzled.

Central continued.

"That's great news, One, but stay focused. Are any of you damaged?"

"Central... looks like it's just me, actually. I'm missing part of my right wing, got clipped by plasma fire."

"Copy that, Xenonaut-One. Xenonauts, return to base. Central out."

* * *

MacLeod leaned back in his cockpit, settling in for the flight back to base.

They were all alive. They were _all alive.  
_ He almost couldn't believe it.

Since joining the 115th two weeks ago, he'd flown three missions and watched two others from the sidelines.  
No matter what happened, no matter what type of UFO they faced, each mission seemed to have at least one pilot go down fatally, oftentimes more than one.

Laitinen had even turned it into a game, when he was still around- before every mission, he drew straws for the guys going out, trying to figure out who would die.  
He'd drawn the short straw a week ago, apparently.

MacLeod had seen eight pilots die in the XFW, five of them pilots he was flying with.

Most of the pilots that had come before him were gone, as well- before today the squadron was just the three of them: Eriksson, Siddiqui, and himself.

He looked at the newcomers by his sides.  
They... were pretty alright people. They could hold their own in a fight.

He thought about his own little slice of the battle and his wing... witch; about how Kozlova just _appeared_ out of nowhere, with the Scatter Laser.

Point-blank range, right in the path of a UFO... so many things could have gone wrong with her plan and left her a smouldering, bloodstained wreck below.  
But still, she just went ahead and _did_ it. That commanded pretty high respect from him.  
 _Just wish she'd told me what she was doing..._

He heard a _thump_ just above his head.  
"The fuck?"

Looking up, he saw Kozlova's face pressed up against the cockpit glass above him, asleep.  
Chernov and Barinova had pulled up to his left and right, respectively.

The eighteen-year old flight officer looked between the two of them, asking them both: "What the hell?"

Chernov seemed just as confused as MacLeod was, and Barinova shrugged as she struggled to carry both her weapon and Kozlova's.  
"Ehehe, sorry about that, MacLeod. I guess she's just tired?"

He lightly tapped against the windshield glass beneath Kozlova's face twice. She didn't stir.  
He tried again, to equal success.

He looked closer.  
He could see her hair blowing and arms dangling in the windstream.  
Her mouth was open slightly, widening and narrowing with the rhythm of her breathing.

She looked... really...  
 _Stupid.  
_ "Cute."

...

 _what the fuck what did I just_

Chernov was laughing his head off, Barinova was frowning, and MacLeod imagined that if her hands were free she would be crossing them.

Drawing close to his cockpit, she proceeded to unload on him.  
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean, mister?! You're thinking _things_ about her, aren't you?! You'd better not be, or I'm going to..."

He heard giggles from above, that soon developed into full-blown laughter.  
Kozlova was awake now, very much so, and pointing at him.  
"Pfahahahaha... the- the look on your f-f-fa-ahahahaha!"

Macleod and Barinova both looked at her, confused.  
She managed to contain her laughter, after a while.

"Ahaha... aha... sorry about that, it was just so funny! You were looking so _confused_ and Vera looked so angry and funny it was just _hilarious_!  
"...but... did you mind me using your plane as an impromptu bed?"

Macleod just stared at her for a couple of seconds.  
 _What just happened?_

He caught himself.  
"Well... not really? I didn't really care, as long as you got off before I had to land."

"Alright then!"  
She then promptly laid back down on the cockpit glass, draping herself across the roof of the plane.

He leaned back.

Things were looking up.

* * *

[RAF Bentley Priory]

Fighter Command was in chaos.

Observer reports were coming in about a fifteen-strong group of Neuroi that had suddenly materialized from thin air in Sector B.

Chain Home should have reported the raid as they were flying over the coast- but they hadn't said a word.

In fact, no one could contact any radar stations in Sector B anymore, which potentially left an entire approach lane to London wide open.

As it stood, the intruding Neuroi were almost to the London city limits and closing fast.

Fighter squadrons near London were already being scrambled to meet the threat, and so was the 501st. Whether or not they would get there in time was another matter.

Worryingly, Sector C also started to fill with the colored markers that indicated aircraft reports.

Sure enough, a track marker block was placed there soon enough as well; twenty-five Neuroi, right in the centre of Sector C.

* * *

[Britannian Airspace, Group 11, Sector B]

Jan Daszewski of No. 303 Squadron grumbled and swore as he climbed to altitude.

"I thought they told us this would not be happening anymore!"

"Squadron 303, this is Sapper Control, your contacts are at angels two-five over Redhill, vector three-one-five, range five miles. You are to delay them until Witch reinforcements arrive."

His commanding officer, Squadron Leader Drobinski, replied.  
"What is happening?"

"303, we've got fifteen bandits moving on London. Something's up with the coastal radar in this Sector, no one can talk to them anymore."

The sector controller called again a few minutes later.  
"303, be advised, reinforcements will be delayed significantly- another group of Neuroi just showed up in the middle of Sector C, we're redirecting fighters to intercept."

"Oh, _excellent_. We will be stuck up here, alone, against fifteen Neuroi. I can see this ending _so well_ for us, " Jan heard over the radio.

Drobinski cut them all off.  
"Quiet, everyone. I tally fifteen at twelve o'clock, about four miles out."

"Copy that, 303. Good luck."

* * *

[Sector C]

The Sector Controller for Sector C radioed the 501st coolly and quickly.

"501st, this is Tophat, Fighter Command has you tracked. Intercept heading three-zero-zero, three-zero miles out, at angels three-five. Estimate two-five Neuroi, holding positions.

"Orders are to clear them out as fast as possible and prepare for further interception tasking. Will update as info comes in."

Minna replied with practiced calm as they turned to fly the intercept course.  
"Affirmative."

The ten of them were already formed into their pairs, forming a large staggered line of Witches.

 _Twenty-five Neuroi..._

The prospect was troubling. It was like the Battle for Britannia all over again, but back then the Neuroi were still only lightly armored.  
All around them, they could see other units, magical and not, all flying to the same intercept.

 _How had this happened?_

Was the tide of the war going to turn again? Did the Neuroi gain stealth capabilities, or teleportation...?

She waited for further news from the Sector Controller, knowing that it would probably be bad.

"Attention Sector C. Ground observers report that four of the Neuroi are apparently merging somehow. The rest of the bandits are all medium to large types, and they seem to be orbiting the-

"Wait, negative, they're ... shit! Heads up, bandits are splitting up and moving to engage!"

With her magic, Minna detected ten Neuroi heading their way, and in the bright morning sunlight they were easy to see, black and red specks in the distance.  
Bright orange tracers rose up to meet them from below, fire bathing the Neurois' undersides as the antiaircraft gunners got to work.

She got a good look at the Neuroi, with the help of her magic to confirm their types: three "Gunboats", three "Zeppelins", and four "Needles".

The "Gunboat"-type Neuroi were diving far below the rest, to put their top-mounted lasers in position to fire.  
The long, thin, "Needle"-type Neuroi were speeding up, ahead of the rest of the formation, front-mounted laser panels already starting to glow.  
The larger, rounder "Zeppelin"-type Neuroi were smoothly sailing onwards towards them, side-mounted lasers providing opportunistic covering fire for the other groups.

"501st, 501st, this is Squadron 401, to your low six."

She didn't need to turn around to notice them, but she did anyways.  
Twelve more people were in the air below the 501st, a mix of Spitfire planes and Strikers.

"So, 501, how do you want to handle this?"

Minna looked around, at the rest of the human formation.

"Sanya, Eila, take the 401 fighter planes and intercept the ones below us. Sakamoto, Perrine, Lucchini, and Shirley will intercept the Needles. Trude, Erica, Lynette, and I will intercept the Zeppelins with the 401 Squadron Witches."

A chorus of affirmations were given, and the interceptors broke into their assigned groups.

* * *

Lynette was scared- no, actually, she was _terrified_.

She had enough trouble in training as it was! She- she couldn't go up against this many enemies!  
And they were over Brittania! If- if she failed, people would _die_ , just like that!

The gun rattled in her hands, and she started to wobble as they closed the distance.

Lasers sprang out to meet them, and battle was joined.

The "Zeppelins" were named after their wide, oblong hulls; their primary armaments were two large "stripes" of laser firing panels on both long sides.

They were slow but powerful, floating with its sides to the human flyers, like a warship of the skies.

She saw a set of large explosions below- Sanya must have already started firing.  
 _I should, too, I suppose_ , Lynette thought.

She slowed and stopped while the three Karlslanders with her continued onwards.

She raised her rifle, originally meant to destroy tanks but now repurposed as an anti-Neuroi weapon, and tried to draw a bead on one of the Zeppelins.  
She picked a spot on one, directly to her twelve o'clock, and fired, sending a heavy antitank round into its exposed side.

All Witches naturally imbued their shots with magical power, making them effective against Neuroi armor- which was why Witches were so effective against Neuroi.  
Lynette's round flew straight into the Zeppelin Neuroi, and the magical energy within it released all at once, flowing into the Neuroi armor "panels" and causing them to lose cohesion.  
The kinetic energy from the specially made armor-piercing bullet transferred easily to the decoherent Neuroi armor, allowing the bullet to penetrate and damage even more than it would have against human-made armor.

The end result was a rather large hole in the Neuroi's side.

The other Witches were opening fire as well, their bullets cutting gashes in the Neuroi hulls, all much smaller than what Lynette had done.  
The Zeppelin craft noticed this, and their return fire sweeped out, aiming in her direction.

With a cry, she dived to dodge, slowing a short distance afterwards to take another shot.  
As she aimed, however, more lasers fired again, ruining her shot as she evaded.

The other Witches were swarming the Zeppelins, apparently not noticing Lynette as they weaved through fire not meant for them.  
She stopped evading for a second, took quick aim at one of the Neuroi, and fired before the lasers could fix on her again.

The shot barely went wide, ripping a large tear through the Zeppelin's top armor as it grazed the Neuroi's surface.

Slowing briefly, she went for another shot, but the Zeppelin lasers were even faster now, reacting to her aiming almost instantly.

As she evaded, she tried to fire while moving- but this had even worse results than the last shot, missing the Neuroi entirely.

Perrine's voice came over the radio shortly afterwards.  
"Lynette, what are you doing?! Try _actually aiming!_ "

"I-I'm trying my best to!"

"Well, _do better!_ Honestly..."

Lynette slowed and stopped to aim this time. More laser fire flew towards her, as she was coming to expect now.

One of the lasers cut extremely close to her, and instinctively Lynette threw up a shield- more lasers impacted shortly afterwards, forcing her backwards and downwards before her shield crumbled.

During a brief lull in the lasers, she stopped and aimed again, sending a snap-shot right into one of the Zeppelin's centres.  
The shot impacted directly in one of the gashes the Witches had made, allowing the round to penetrate even further into the Neuroi's armor.

The Neuroi's side _exploded_ in magical energy and Neuroi fragments, and inside the large crater shone a small red crystal- the Neuroi core.  
One of the Witches- _Trude_ , Lynette realized- fired a machine gun burst directly into the crystal, and the Zeppelin shattered into a million pieces.

Lynette gazed upon the sight.

The glowing white fragments that remained hung in the air as they slowly dropped to the ground, like flower petals floating in the wind, like snowflakes on a winter's day, like-

A laser beam glanced right under her legs, nearly grazing her Strikers before she could throw up a shield.

Lynette wasn't quite sure if the Neuroi felt emotions, but they certainly seemed to be mad now.  
The laser panels of the Zeppelins began to glow even brighter than before, and soon Lynette found herself dodging a tide of what seemed to be millions of laser beams.

Normally, a Witch would pour her magic into a strong shield at this moment; the Neuroi couldn't maintain lasers forever, and shielding was much more reliable than trying to evade thick laser fire.  
But Lynette opted for the latter, instead- she wasn't quite confident enough in her magical power to trust her shields right now.

Dropping and flying as erratically and quickly as she could, she tried to outfly the lasers, weaving through the forest of laser beams.

The other Witches, closer up, continued to slowly eat away at the thick Neuroi armor, digging through the Neuroi's guts and trying to find the core.

They used their shields to block the occasional stray shot, but Lynette bitterly noticed that none of them realized that the majority of it wasn't aimed for them.

She looked up, to her sides, and below. She was quickly being boxed in by laser fire.  
She tried backing up, and braced to try and fly _through_ the lasers with her shields...

A Spitfire plane broke off from the engagement below and pulled up suddenly, firing incendiary rounds across one of the Zeppelin's laser firing stripes.

"Stay. The fuck. Away from. _My sister!_ ", she heard a female voice shout over the radio.

The incendiary rounds caused the laser panels to overheat briefly, giving Lynette a brief window to fly out of the box of lasers she was trapped in.  
The Spitfire formed up on her left, and through the cockpit glass she could see a familiar head of cream-colored hair.  
She called out to it.

"Emily!"

"Hey, sis! Sorry for not arriving earlier, got caught up below with the 'boats."

A laser shot from one of the Zeppelins lanced out, towards the Spitfire, and Emily Bishop of the 401st Squadron, Royal Farlander Air Force rolled to evade it.  
"I'm guessing you need time to aim?" she asked, looking to the flood of fire aimed at them.

Lynette nodded.

"Well, makes sense. You're probably the most dangerous thing on the battlefield by far," she said, grinning.

"I'll go run interference. Well, shall we, eh?"  
Lynette nodded earnestly.

She flew towards the Zeppelins, aiming for and bathing their laser strips in radiant flame.

Lynette could hear Minna complaining over the radio as she aimed.

"Pilot, break off now! The Witches have these targets locked!"

"Sorry, Wing Commander! Have to give my sister breathing room, hope you'll understand!"

With the air free of lasers for now, Lynette had the chance to take aim once more and fire, blowing another large hole in its frame.

The other, closer Witches followed her shot up, quickly uncovering its core and shattering it with ease. The Zeppelin disintegrated, but Lynette didn't stop to admire it this time, drawing a bead on the third and last remaining target.

Emily banked to the right and pulled into a chandelle, flying up and towards Lynette, who fired at the last Zeppelin before ducking instinctively to avoid the Spitfire.

The plane's guns roared, and Lynette quickly whipped around and to her left to find a Needle trying to make an attack pass at her, headed off by incendiary rounds from Emily's spitfire.

She saw a brief flash, light glinting off steel- and the Neuroi fell apart, a large gash sliced in it by Sakamoto's sword.

This phase of the battle was winding down now; with two of their primary gunning ( _laser-ing?,_ Lynette thought) platforms taken down the rest of the Neuroi were pulling back- just two Needles, a Gunboat, and the last Zeppelin, each riddled with holes and slashes in their hulls.

The human interceptor squadrons flew further inland to pursue the fleeing aliens.

* * *

As they flew on, Lynette saw Sanya and Eila form on her left, and Emily formed on her right in a classic finger-four- a _Schwarm_ , if Lynette remembered correctly.

Sanya was reloading her Fliegerhammer, loading four rockets, her last, from a harness on her chest. Eila was hanging protectively around her, occasionally sending appreciative glances at Lynette and her rifle.

Emily was inspecting her Spitfire's instrument panel, making minor adjustments to things Lynette didn't really understand too much, not being trained to pilot conventional planes.

The rest of the 501st and the 401st flew on around them; the 401st's fighters and Witches were at the forefront, and the "Karlsland Trio" of the 501st hung at the back of the formation.

Lynette herself continued on, looking for the remaining Neuroi.

She found them.

Ahead of the two squadrons, Lynette could see a huge clump of black and red forming, a loose sphere of Neuroi matter panels and cores.

She could see other squadrons of Neuroi arriving at the same time they did, more human fighter formations pursuing them.  
The smaller Neuroi seemed to melt away as they approached the mass, their cores and matter joining it.

The human fighters stopped as one, gazing on the spectacle. The cloud simply hung there now, a swirling mass of red and black.

The cores all migrated to the center of the cloud, merging into one massive red crystal, and the mass began to resolve itself into an octahedron shape, a black diamond in the sky.  
The collected mass was truly massive, its shadow the size of a small town, and it stood unmoving as the human fighters began to pour both magical and nonmagical fire on it.

Minna stopped to inspect it, and Mio pulled up to hover beside her.  
"Mio, what's going on? Can you..."

"Yes. A moment," came the terse reply.

"...It's just a massive Neuroi. The core is directly in its center."

"It's just standing there, but ... why? Surely it must be doing something within it...", Minna replied.

The diamond Neuroi simply floated resolutely, awash in flame and bullet sparks that did nothing to it.

Trude raced past her, moving to enter the fray, double machine guns locked and loaded.

The Neuroi shifted suddenly, the large shell rapidly forming into a set of long crystalline extensions around the core, like the spokes of a wheel.

Another set of diamonds grew out of the "spokes", oriented vertically. Lynette could see the core, a red sphere in the center of the wheel, encased in a smaller octahedron.

A single long, thick red laser appeared, and rapidly sliced through the swarm of fighters and Witches surrounding it in a 360-degree sweep.  
Lynette could see dozens of explosions, trails of smoke and fire dropping from the sky. Some of them had shields under them as they hit the ground.

The Neuroi fired its laser again, this time tracking Trude specifically- the Karlsland Witch raised her strong shields to defend against it, but even she had to dive quickly under the enormous weight of the laser's energy.  
The laser seemed to follow her, and as Minna and Erica flew to assist her, it switched targets.

The laser swept towards them, and while they evaded the worst of it, the powerful beam grazed the bottom of Minna's Strikers.

The pair of machines exploded and quickly fell off her legs as she plummeted face-first towards the ground, screaming and trailing blood.  
Mio moved to catch her, and was also targeted by the Neuroi- though with her trained reflexes and nimble Striker she was able to dodge it completely.

Sanya, off Lynette's left, fired her last salvo of rockets at it, aiming for the octahedron containing its core.  
The explosives ripped towards it and detonated on impact, the simultaneous explosions denting the dense diamond.

That got its attention.

It shifted again, splitting into four separate pieces: three large, vaguely-cube like blocks and a set of large rotating spikes, forming what seemed to be a barrel.

Lynette noticed the exposed core in its centre, and began to aim.

 _Wind, five knots to the north-west..._

The Neuroi slewed towards Sanya, and Eila grabbed her-

 _Distance, 750 meters..._

The Neuroi emitted a high pitched noise, and the core in its center glowed brightly, and a massive laser beam, even thicker than before, shot out from the core, through the barrel-

Eila had latched on to Sanya and pulled her out of harms way, just in time, and the laser punched through the air above them, as thick as a house.

 _Angle, 5 degrees downward..._

Lynette fired as the Neuroi's laser faded away.

She missed, the shot grazing the Neuroi's core but leaving a thick scratch on the core's surface.

She, and everyone in the battle, heard it _scream_ , a loud, inhuman screech filling the nearby airspace.  
It seemed to recoil, the Neuroi's shell contracting in on itself as a set of large spikes punched out from every direction.

It rapidly reformed into a massive spike of jet black alien matter, the core in a hollow within.  
It screamed again, and fired directly at Lynette, who instinctively dove for the deck as fast as she could.

She managed to barely clear herself from the Neuroi's firing path, as did her sister, and the laser beam cut a thick hole in the air just above them that no shield could have stopped.

She could feel the beam's heat, even from a fair distance below, like a frying pan, or the Sun.  
Fortunately, the Neuroi didn't seem capable of maintaining a beam like that for long, and it quickly cut off the laser.

She dropped a bit more altitude, and took aim as the core began to glow again.

The beam lanced out again, swinging towards Erica, then Shirley and Lucchini, then Mio, who all sharply got out of the way of the incoming beam.

Coming back around, the beam raced for Trude, who was coming in for a risky close-in attack run.  
The beam spashed across her shield, but the excess radiant heat warmed her gun- and caused her ammunition to cook off as the beam shut down again.

The guns in Trude's hands exploded, knocking her senseless.

As she tried to regain her bearings the Neuroi fired, the beam narrower and more precise this time.  
Trude, too disoriented to raise a shield in time, took a hit directly to the gut.  
She spiraled out of the sky, trailing smoke and leaking blood.

Shirley zoomed in to catch her at the last minute with both arms.

She stopped to lay Trude on the ground- then zoomed away with her again when the Neuroi tried to kill them on the ground with another laser shot.

* * *

Minna and Trude were both out of the fight, with various degrees of injury- and worse, Mio and Shirley had their hands full with both of them, respectively, and couldn't fight back.  
Sanya was out of rockets, and Eila was too busy protecting her to contribute offensively.  
Even if she could, it wouldn't have helped; as Lucchini, Perrine, and the countless other fighters around them were demonstrating, machine gun fire, even if it was magically enhanced, seemed to have no effect on the massive Neuroi.

This left Lynette and Erica as the squadron's two effective attackers.

The Neuroi formed its deadly "barrel" shape again, this time aiming for the latter.

A low-pitched _whirr_ filled the air, rising rapidly into a loud, violent _scream_ as the Neuroi fired a wide-angle laser blast at her.

She rolled out of the way, the laser tracing a wide circle in the sky as it lagged behind her.  
She tightened her roll and began to spin, launching into her signature _Sturm_ attack as the Neuroi reformed into its original large octahedron shape.

She sped towards, and through, it, barely missing the core again but blowing a massive hole inside, and through, the rest of the Neuroi's shell.

Lynette dove down, positioning herself in front the Neuroi's shell, looking into the hole.  
Within, the bright red core lay exposed.  
As Lynette took aim, the core began to glow brightly, a laser shot preparing to vaporize her where she hovered...

* * *

Lynette fired first.

The shot rang out, the bullet impacting the core and piercing, as it was made to, through the core and shattering it. The bright glow subsided, and soon there was nothing left of the Neuroi.

* * *

Just above the octahedral Neuroi, an Overseer UFO had hovered, cloaked from all detection by the power of the Ethereal within.

As Lynette shot the Neuroi's core, the Ethereal released its control over the Neuroi, their mission complete- for the most part, anyways.

Though not all of the mission objectives were satisfied, the Neuroi delivered by the UFOs had done their duties admirably...

...and two out of three targets downed was certainly acceptable, even if they were only probable kills.  
The third target, though... her Gift was certainly strong- far stronger than most, if her rolling collision attack and her reputation as the Black Devil were anything to go by.

The one who finally felled the Neuroi, however... she was strong with the Gift as well. Even if no one else realized it. Such a shame, that they would have one such as her in their midst and not realize it.

The Ethereal sent mental orders to withdraw to the coastal forward base to the diversionary ground-attack Neuroi force.

Then, the UFO gunned its engines and flew upwards, climbing to orbit, still unnoticed.

* * *

Squadron 303 was busy mopping up the rest of the Neuroi advancing on London when the Neuroi suddenly turned tail and began to head back to the coast.

Some of the scattered Witches that had come to reinforce the 303rd moved to chase them before being called off by Sector Control.

Thus, Jan Daszewski watched the Neuroi _retreat_ , a first for what were usually suicidally mindless drones.

"They're withdrawing?" asked someone, disbelief apparent in their tone.  
"What the hell...?", asked another.

Jan looked past them; there wasn't anything coming to reinforce the Neuroi, and nothing else for the Neuroi to run to besides.

"I will take what we can get. The 303 is more than a bit tired and bloody up here.", his squadron leader called.

Jan pulled on his yoke, falling in with the rest of No. 303 Squadron as he turned towards home.  
 _Another oddity in a day full of them,_ he supposed.

This was new, and pretty dangerous.

Things were _not_ looking up.

* * *

 **End Chapter 6.**

* * *

Supplementary Information:

* * *

XFW Current Pilots, by Callsign Number:

Cpt. Adrian "Viking" Eriksson: Eight intercepts, Five kills (Xenonaut-One)  
F/O Viktor Chernov: One intercept, zero kills (Xenonaut-Two)  
Cpt. Rashid "Jammed" Siddiqui: Seven intercepts, Five kills (Xenonaut-Three)  
F/O Vera Barinova: One intercept, One kill (Xenonaut-Four)  
F/O Ekaterina Kozlova: One intercept, zero kills (Xenonaut-Five)  
Lt. Colin Macleod: Three intercepts, Two kills (Xenonaut-Six)

* * *

XFW Memorial Wall:

Cpt. "Wonderland" Alice (5 Kills) - 5/11/44  
Lt. "Baja" Gutierrez (3 Kills) - 5/7/44  
Lt. "Pioneer" Herrmann (3 Kills) - 4/14/44  
F/O Laitinen (1 Kill) - 5/15/44  
F/O Moore (1 Kill) - 5/11/44

F/O Jenkins - 3/12/44  
F/O Ogawa - 3/12/44  
F/O Leonova - 3/16/44  
F/O Smith - 3/16/44  
F/O Zhukova - 3/23/44  
F/O Kozlov - 3/23/44  
F/O Hass - 3/23/44  
F/O Aetherton - 3/31/44  
F/O Malinowski - 4/1/44  
F/O Bondarenko - 4/8/44  
F/O Warren - 4/10/44  
F/O Perez - 4/23/44  
F/O Martin - 4/28/44  
F/O Evans - 5/1/44  
F/O Kurasawa - 5/3/44  
F/O Scholz - 5/3/44  
F/O Dufour - 5/3/44  
F/O Mitchell - 5/10/44

* * *

[Britannian Ministry for Magical Talent]  
[Witch Information File – Bishop, Lynette]  
[Updated 14/03/44]

Family Lineage: Bishop  
Consistent Witch Lineage?: Yes

Lineage Ability: Telekinesis, Category: Ballistics  
Special Notes: NONE

Individual Magical Ability: Ballistic Stabilization  
Special Notes: May also have Projectile Enhancement abilities- cannot confirm, data is not consistent.

Academic Ability: Average  
Athletic Ability: Average  
Mundane Skills: None of note.

Status: In Active Military Service  
Branch: Britannian Royal Air Force  
Current Unit: 501st Joint Fighter Wing

Commanding Officer Reports: Her magical control is lacking, as are her combat maneuvering skills.  
She may need to be moved to a less specialized unit if she does not show improvement.

Previous Military History: No. 610 Squadron, No. 11 Group, RAF (transferred out 14/03/44, to 501st JFW)  
Special Notes: None

* * *

 **A/N** : And that's that.  
Holy crap, this took way too much time to write. I blame ADD.

As I was writing chapter 5, I realized: for all the XCOM operations I've gone into, I'd neglected the other side of this crossover.

And after doing a bit of research (by which I mean reading SWQ) and getting distracted by the same, I realized that air battles were pretty fun to write about.

So I hope you've enjoyed the first appearance of everyone's favorite flying magical girls- and the surprise guest appearance by everyone's favorite octahedral energy beam Angel.

About that: I have no idea how I got the idea to throw Ramiel at the 501st, but in the end I rather liked how it turned out.

Anyways, shit's about to get serious for the Allies.  
Nobody's invincible, not even the 501st, and concentrating your power into a single person, even someone like an ace Witch, is bound to have repercussions.

Neuroi numbers combined with Ethereal C3I and transportation make a scary combo.

Also: for all the shit I keep having Lynette take from everyone else in the 501st, Emily was right: Lynette is quite dangerous against the Neuroi, despite her inexperience.  
For anyone who's played Long War: Imagine a Sniper who has _HEAT Ammo_ as an innate perk, instead of just having it with the Gauss Long Rifle.  
Her issue is, of course, having to stop to aim properly and not miss completely.  
Unfortunately, the only ones who realize this are the _Neuroi_ \- hence why they keep trying to focus fire her down.

Next Chapter: Fallout from the battle! Injured people! Consequences! The Blame Game!  
And: XCOM _finally_ raids that coastal base mentioned in Chapter 4! Stuff goes down!


End file.
